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The Edge of the Woods 
And Other Papers 



The Edge of the Woods 

And Other Papers 



By 

ZEPHINE fiUMPHREY 

Author of ''Recollections of My Mother 




New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 
London and Edinburgh 



Copyright, 19 13, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 






\2> 



New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 



JAN 24 1914 

i)aA3G2313 



I 



To 

Grace A. Hubbard 

171 gratitude for her quickening touch 

upon my spirit 



The author is indebted to Tlie Atlantic Monthly 
for permission to republish " Ursa Minor," " The 
Passing of Indoors," " Closing the Country 
Home," "The Lady and the Garden," "The 
Church and the Mountain," " Hoosick Junction," 
"Cave-Dwellers, or the Hall-Bedroom," "The 
Ultimate Hare " ; to The Outlook for permission 
to republish " Springs of Life," " Wood Magic," 
" The Edge of the Woods," " A Portrait of the 
Devil," " On a Bench in the Park," " The Next 
Generation," " The One Thing Needful " ; to The 
Congregationalist for permission to republish 
" On the Love of Places," " The Joyous Company 
of the Possessed," "Optimist's Day," "Thank 
Time ! " " In Praise of Everyday," " The Decline 
of Melancholy," " Procrastination," " Wait ! " 
" The Peril of Friendship " ; to Scribner^s Maga- 
zine for permission to republish " Encore." 



[7] 



Contents 



I. 


The Edge of the Woods 


II 


II. 


On the Love of Places 


20 


III. 


Closing the Country Home . 


. 26 


IV. 


The Passing of Indoors 


. 39 


V. 


Ursa Minor .... 


. 53 


VI. 


Wood Magic .... 


. 68 


VII. 


The Lady of the Garden 


. 77 


VIII. 


The Church and the Mountain 


90 


IX. 


Springs of Life 


. 107 


X. 


The Joyous Company of the Pos- 






sessed .... 


. Ill 


XL 


On a Bench in the Park 


. 116 


XII. 


The Decline of Melancholy 


. 131 


XIII. 


A Portrait of the Devil 


. 139 


XIV. 


HoosiCK Junction . 


. 148 


XV. 


Cave-Dwellers, or the Hall-Bed- 






room . . . . 


• 155 


XVI. 


In Praise of Everyday 


. 161 


XVII. 


Optimist's Day 


. 170 


XVIII. 


Thank Time ! . . . . 


174 


XIX. 


Wait 


. 182 


XX. 


Procrastination . 


185 


XXI. 


Encore 


188 


XXII. 


The Peril of Friendship 


194 


XXIII. 


The Ultimate Hare 


199 


XXIV. 


The Next Generation . 


211 


XXV. 


The One Thing Needful 
[9] 


220 



THE EDGE OF THE WOODS 

" ^Tj ^HE poetry of earth is never dead," nor 
I is it ever entirely absent from any 
JL corner of hill or plain, of desert or sea- 
shore. Everywhere under the bending sky, on the 
responsive land and sea, everywhere Poetry moves; 
and the beat of her unseen feet may be heard by 
us all. But, nevertheless, there are certain spots 
where she haunts most persistently, where, as it 
were, she takes up her abode — if anything so 
evanescent may be said to have an abode. The 
edge of the woods is one of these places of the 
lingering of the light that never was. 

Mountain woods, I mean, that clothe the sum- 
mit of some mighty hill. Across the high crest 
and the massive shoulders, they lie all unbroken 
and undiscovered — secret, unthinkable, a close 
realm of old wilderness. But, sweeping on down 
towards the valley, they pause, suddenly, as if 
smitten aware of a dangerous tendency ; and above 
the steep fields where the presence of man is all 
too evident, they hang arrested. It is in this 
broken, withholding edge, as one looks up at it 
from the valley, that the poetry of earth seems to 
me peculiarly to hover. 

As one looks up at it from the valley. One 

[11] 



The Edge of the Woods 

should not visit it in the flesh, for its very sig- 
nificance lies in its distance and secrecy. How 
dark the shadow lurks all along behind the out- 
ermost, venturing, pausing trees — a fathomless 
gloom which yet invites the vision to enter as 
far as it may, as far as it possibly may! The 
gazer accepts the challenge and makes daring 
raids into the mystery, biding his time until the 
level sunlight opens the way ; but he never gets 
very far. Something baffles him, waiting upon 
and then disappointing his penetration. "What is 
it ? The ancient wizardry of the forest, hinting 
its presence in token that Pan is not dead after 
all, but refusing a full revelation ? All the wild- 
ness of nature is there, all the delicacy, and all 
the fleeing mockery. Beautiful as a deer's is the 
poise of the arrested trees, hesitating. Be sure 
they will never advance. 

The bodily foot may not climb to the woods, 
nor may the bodily vision pierce very far among 
them ; but the spirit may enter them when it will 
and wander them through and through. This 
liberty is unfailing and full in a greater degree 
than most permissions which one receives of life. 
Sitting at peace in the valley below, one has only 
to fold the hands and dwell with the eyes on the 
distant, shadowy forest edge ; and presently one is 
admitted, enwrapped, beyond all following of the 
senses, in an enchanted world. 
[12] 



The Edge of the Woods 

A far-off wood which one visits thus knows 
nothing of the ordinary conventions of time and 
place. It knows its lovers, that is all ; and one 
may meet any and every spirit wandering among 
the trees. Dante and Yirgil of course ; one never 
takes many steps without finding them, beautiful 
comrades, hand in hand, bound in their tenderest 
of relations, their perfect friendship. Sir Galahad, 
too, comes riding by, his face uplifted in ecstasy — 

^* Between dark stems the forest glows, 
I hear a noise of hymns ; ' ' 

and Eosalind and Orlando jest feelingly with 
their love. The wood is tolerant ; it does not 
hesitate to admit Don Quixote to the exalted 
company of Sir Galahad, and Fuck and Ariel 
wing their way among the whispering leaves. 
Endymion wanders, daft and bemused with his 
longing ; Comus has betaken himself 

'^ to this ominous wood, 
And, in thick shelter of black shades embowered, 
Excels his mother at her mighty art." 

A strange assortment of people to meet on a 
New England hillside ! But they excite no sur- 
prise, they belong to the wood as perfectly as the 
hermit thrush. JSTor do they intrude on the soli- 
tude which is the soul of a forest, the best boon it 
has to bestow. They are themselves solitude. 
[13] 



The Edge of the Woods 

Who shall say what spirit voices may utter those 
hints which come so thrillingly to us out of the 
silence of nature, those dim surmises, those vague 
assurances? We are wont to think of them as 
the expression of the inarticulate mountains them- 
selves, of the Spirit of Solitude. But there is the 
touch of a soul on a soul in the rapturous com- 
munion. 

Our own human nature must needs be an 
abiding marvel to us, if we are reasonable. How 
curious and perverse is the fact that that which 
we cannot fully know, can only guess at, has 
power to thrill us beyond all our ascertained 
knowledge, dear and desirable though the latter 
may be ! We visit the lower woods day by day ; 
they allure us so potently that we cannot resist 
them when they bid us come. They are very 
wonderful, all but satisfying. 'Nor do they ever 
reveal themselves wholly ; they are wise with the 
wisdom of their kind. There is nothing in all the 
world that holds its spell like a wood. Never- 
theless, the fact that our feet have trod so often 
the mossy ways, without leading us yet to the 
Holy Grail, does serve, all unconsciously, to fetter 
our expectation. We know what we shall find, 
and it is good beyond any telling ; we know also 
that we shall often happen upon new, unexpected 
treasure. But not the Holy Grail ; no, alas ! not 
the Holy Grail. That waits aloft in the higher 
[M] 



The Edge of the Woods 

wood, and we may glimpse it, shining behind the 
shadowy edge, beckoning but inaccessible. 

What does it all mean ? Is a glance really the 
clearest seeing, is the surest knowledge a guess ? 
This is true in our human relationships. We do 
not learn much if we enter boldly, searchingly 
into the heart of a friend, piercing the shadows 
with the flash of our inquiries, thrusting the 
underbrush aside in our rude advance. We are 
at liberty thus to treat those who really love us. 
For love is the greatest force in the world, and 
anything but the wisest. It longs to be known 
to the uttermost, to open itself out, to give itself 
up ; it asks no keener bliss than absolute sur- 
render. Therefore we may all enter at will and 
rend the meaning of our friends' lives into little 
pieces, and set ourselves to study each one. But, 
oh ! what a pitiful, helpless chaos shall we thus 
contemplate ! It is perfectly true that this curi- 
ous trait which I have just discovered exists as an 
element in my friend's nature ; but it never oper- 
ates without that other, and still that other, char- 
acteristic. I must not consider it alone ; I must 
hardly consider it at all. Consideration is an 
angel only when each offending Adam turns it 
loose on himself. 

Avaunt, thou pryer, thou intermeddler ! Out 
of the woods ! Away ! Then, at a distance, 
after a while, turn and look back and wait. It is 
[15] 



The Edge of the Woods 

wonderful what a gracious change comes over the 
edge of the wood, relieved of a blundering pres- 
ence. The rough ground smoothes itself into 
velvety sward once more, the brambles withdraw, 
and gradually the poetry comes back, the beauti- 
ful, hovering, vanishing meaning, lurking within 
the shadow and flitting among the trees. Which 
is the real life ? Who can doubt ? Keality is no 
affair of one bramble or one swamp, or even of 
one summer glade or one hermit thrush ; it is a 
spirit compounded of many elements, warring, 
agreeing, blending only when viewed at a rever- 
ent distance. 

Life is full of a multitude of edge of the woods 
experiences. We are constantly pausing and hold- 
ing the breath in the presence of something 
swiftly divined — a strain of music, a glimpse of 
a face with its soul in its eyes, a revelation of 
pathos or humor. It is well to be ever on the 
watch for these occurrences. They do not an- 
nounce themselves ; they seem, rather, to take all 
pains to conceal themselves. So that it happens 
that they may be missed more easily than not. 
But therein lies part of their value to us. They 
demand alertness and sympathy of us ; they need 
our cooperation. Like Emerson's " Days," they 
give no sign, but leave us to deal with them as 
we will ; and all too often it happens, alas ! that 
we, too late, under their solemn fillets see the 
[16] 



The Edge of the Woods 

scorn. " Diadems and fagots." Yes, diadems in 
very truth. The fullest of disclosures are made 
in fleeting and indirect revelations, more or less 
unconscious. 

It is, of course, a terribly lonely business to be 
condemned to this signal code of communication ; 
but nobody has ever yet denied the loneliness of 
human life. 

" Yes ! in the sea of life enisled, 
With echoing straits between us thrown, 
Dotting the shoreless watery wild. 
We mortal millions live alone.^^ 

^' The irresponsive silence of the land. 
The irresponsive sounding of the sea, 
Speak both one message of one sense to me : 
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof. '^ 

Thus two poets among many. But we are less 
alone when we submit to the fragmentary and 
vanishing habit of our destiny than when we 
rebel against it. Silent, darting intuition may 
weave a close bond between two friends and 
establish an exquisite relation which would suffer 
loss and destruction through a closer pursuit. 
One is not alone when the thrill of love reaches 
one through an averted glance. 

After all, our whole earth stands aloof on the 
edge of the woods. There is nothing complete, 
nothing absolute about our mortal ways. Perhaps 
[17] 



The Edge of the Woods 

by and by a more thorough method may be vouch- 
safed us, but just at present our surest understand- 
ing lies in hints and surmises. 

Beautiful, distant edge of the woods, do I not 
know you in very truth, watching the summer 
day wheel its slow course of change over you ?, 
In the cool morning, I know how the dew lies in 
the long shadow that stretches down the dropping 
hillside away from the sun ; I know how the stir 
of life awakes among the birds and flowers. Later, 
I see the noonday heat beat back the shadow, 
shrunken, diminished, flying for refuge in the 
parent wood ; the very grass glows, and warm 
fragrance loads the failing breeze. Then the day 
wanes, and the mellow light strikes under the 
branches ; I can look in now, but still I cannot 
see what I seek. When the sun has set, the 
shadow comes back and claims all the hillside ; 
and then it is — just when the hope of discovery 
would seem to be over for the day, just when the 
hour is least propitious for investigation — then it 
is that the wood comes nearest to revealing its shy 
spirit, then it is that the poetry hovers almost 
visibly. The blank shade under the trees becomes 
a living gloom, vibrating with meaning, full of a 
thousand presences only just withheld from revela- 
tion. I catch the motion of the leaves where 
these presences have just gone by, I hear the echo 
of their laughter and their solemn hymns. Do I 
[18] 



The Edge of the Woods 

not know them ? Oh ! indeed, I know them better 
than the forms that pass along the valley road as I 
sit meditating thus ; I know them best of all dear 
things in this elusive world. They are the deni- 
zens of the realm which, for better or worse, we 
must all inhabit ; they are the shadows among 
which we most dimly but surely move. For mys- 
tery is our common birthright, and the edge of the 
woods is the natural home of the human spirit. 



[19] 



II 

ON THE LOVE OF PLACES 

IN these days of constant household flux and 
change — now country house, now city house, 
now California or "the south" — much has 
surely been added to life in breadth and variety, 
but something has also been lost. The ancient 
" land passion " of our fathers slumbers in us, or 
has become extinct. This is probably perfectly 
natural. However truly the poets may sing of 
the increase of love in direct proportion to its use, 
there is yet a physical limit to enthusiasm. We 
cannot concern ourselves vitally with music, art, 
philanthropy, new books, lectures, clubs ; we can- 
not travel to see the world and educate our 
children ; we cannot keep ourselves fully abreast 
with the age in its great, exhilarating onward 
march ; and at the same time know very much of 
that rooted attachment to mere soil which stood 
for so much in the arborescent existence of some 
of our ancestors. 

Their passion was perhaps narrow ; beyond a 

doubt, it was prejudiced, blind and unreasonable. 

Yet it was marvellously deep. Land interest was 

to our fathers an actual element in life, abounding 

[20] 



On the Love of Places 

in influence, as natural and as potent in its degree 
as the love of family, as devotion to the state. 
They carried the flavor of their domain about with 
them, and spoke its dialect. They travelled from 
it only with a particular purpose ; and, that pur- 
pose being accomplished, hastened back again to 
sit enthroned, each man on his estate, king-like, 
established, strong. There was about them, abid- 
ing thus, a dignity which we must needs admire. 
And there was a happiness too. 

This latter fact we are sometimes enabled to 
appreciate at flrst hand ; for now and then it 
happens that in some belated modern soul the 
ancient passion is renewed, and how happy goes 
that soul ! Secui^e in the possession of an affection 
which nothing short of an earthquake can remove, 
deep-rooted like the hills, seeming like them to 
derive its life from the very foundations of things, 
it looks with pitying eyes on the rest of mankind, 
hurrying to and fro. If they would only pause 
for a moment, stop long enough to work their 
fingers down through the grass and take hold, 
would they not also be content ? 

The friendship of a place — for friendship is 
what it amounts to — partakes of the nature of 
religion and of humanity. Its quality of perma- 
nence allies it to the former. Always there, 
always the same, unchangeable in its first atti- 
tude towards us, whatever our own veerings and 
[21] 



The Edge of the Woods 

turnings, it is, physically and morally, something 
to build upon. With silent persistence, the familiar 
contours of mountain and river recall us to the 
ideals which they have fostered in us and from 
which, alas! we are all too prone to fall. We 
meet our past selves in the meadows. The en- 
counter may not always be pleasant, but it is 
unfailingly useful. For, though it is of course 
our business to advance steadily in this matter of liv- 
ing, we cannot actually take the shears and cut our- 
selves off day by day, " beginning all over again." 
To-day has to be the result of yesterday ; and it is 
well for us now and then to be reminded of yes- 
terdays long past which were or were not success- 
ful in their achievements. Frequent association 
with one place makes apparent the unity of life ; 
so that we seem to be possessors of a developing 
whole, rather than the observers of kaleidoscopic 
fragments. 

As for the pleasure of a strong local attach- 
ment, there is literally nothing like it in the 
world. To get its fullest flavor, one must first 
acknowledge its prejudice, nay, its absurdity. 
Then one can laugh at oneself. Actually to 
prefer above Switzerland, Italy, England a certain 
group of New England mountains and the valley 
which they enclose — is that not preposterous? 
To stand in the face of the Dent du Midi and 
complacently think of Green Peak ! To murmur, 
[22] 



On the Love of Places 

viewing the Lauterbach, "Well, there is still 
Gilbert Brook ! " 

The land-lover does well to be careful how he 
gives voice to his sentiments. For the chances 
are that he will find but an irritated audience. 
The true cosmopolite cannot stand it that any one 
should be so narrow ; he looks on, exasperated. 

" Is not the structure of Mont Blanc far nobler 
than your Green Peak ? " he inquires. 

" Yes," the land-lover assents. 

" And the Matterhorn much higher ? " 

" Yes ; oh, yes ! " 

" Do not the mountain torrents come with a 
force and majesty of which your brooks never 
dream ? " 

" Certainly that is true." 

"And yet?" 

" And yet." 

Bah ! he is a bigot. 

The situation reminds one of the story of the 
newly betrothed man who was being questioned 
about his lady. Was she beautiful ? No, she 
was not beautiful. Well, then, was she clever? 
No, one would hardly call her clever. Stylish, 
perhaps, with a good address and manner ? No, 
on the whole, he could not say that he thought 

her stylish. Well, what in the world ? There 

was a barely perceptible flicker of the young 
man's eyelid ; then he thought better of it. 
[23] 



The Edge of the Woods 

" She is very good company," he answered 
gravely. 

And yet — to revert — the land-lover is not an 
entke bigot. He views Mont Blanc and the Dent 
du Midi with a reverent, silent attention which he 
has learned at the feet of Green Peak. Shall not 
he who worships truly at the shrine worship 
truly at the high altar ? But when he returns 
home and his valley receives him again, he gathers 
up in one votive offering all his admiration of 
Weisshorn, Matterhorn, Gemmi Pass, and lays it 
before Green Peak. There is a peculiar pleasure 
in that, by your leave, good cosmopolite. 

The human element in the love of a place is of 
course the best thing about it, particularly if the 
place be small enough for the people all to know 
one another and feel the daily beat of one 
another's lives. There is room for disagreement 
here. Some natures could not stand the contact, 
would feel hampered and galled by the inti- 
macy. For such there is always the city. But 
to quieter souls, less independent it may be, there 
is a quite unspeakable sweetness in the tie of a 
small community. One life, one church, one in- 
terest ; one sorrow when death enters a house ; 
one gladness over a wedding; one hand-to-hand 
warfare with deadly sin ; one share in the longed- 
for Kingdom : there is power in this unity. There 
is also a very grave responsibilitv. To each indi- 
[24] 



On the Love of Places 

vidual comes the challenge to see to it that he be 
not the weak strand in the social rope. And, 
moreover, so completely do mountain and meadow, 
forest and waterfall enter into any sympathetic 
human life lived among them that they seem at 
last an integral part of it, finding expression 
through it. To live out a mountain's spirit — 
there is a responsibility for one ! 

It all amounts to this in the end : that whether 
we abide in the midst of five hundred or wander 
among many millions, we are still world citizens 
and have the world's work to do. The law of 
gravitation fortunately confines our inquiring feet 
to this necessity. But he fights well who stands 
established; he does good work whose environ- 
ment is so a part of him that he can forget it 
even while expressing it. We are none of us 
without high tribunals before which we daily 
arraign ourselves. Church, kindred, friends — 
they must probe and test us. It is well if for 
each of us also some bit of land, some special por- 
tion of the common earth, some one community 
presents its standard to be reached, its love to be 
deserved. " Am I worthy of my home ? " is a 
searching question. 



[25] 



Ill 

CLOSING THE COUNTRY HOME 

THIS is the age of the country home, and 
we who are children of the age pride 
ourselves not a little on what we call 
our return to nature, our devotion to field and 
wood. True it is that new houses spring up in 
green valleys every year, that old farmhouses are 
taken over and transformed, that the mountains 
are ringed with worshippers from June until Oc- 
tober. True it is that our book-shelves abound in 
manuals of the garden, of bird and flower, and 
that no self-respecting one of us would venture 
forth in the summer meadows without an opera- 
glass. We are very earnest in the pursuit of our 
outdoor interest ; and, though it occurs to us 
soi^etimes to laugh, genially poking fun at one 
another for our excesses in the field, we never 
seem in the least to doubt the fundamental nature 
of our enthusiasm, nor its perfect desirability in 
the scheme of things at large. Perhaps this as- 
surance is just as well ; certainly no enthusiasm is 
worth a straw without it. And the nature-devo- 
tion is good for soul and body, heart and brain of 
those who confess it. But there is another side to 
the matter, commanded by the point of view of 
[26] 



Closing the Country Home 

the country itself and the country people ; and 
this side is worth consideration if our love is 
really earnest. 

The increase of country homes is working a 
very radical change in the life of the country. 

I have in mind a certain valley, hidden among 
the mountains, remote and silent, a gentle spot, 
yet not untouched with sublimity in its grandly 
encircling hills. Meadow and woodland, pasture 
and stream, are brooded upon by a potent spell 
which serves to bind all hearts to the place in a 
devotion which is seldom equalled outside the 
realm of purely human affection. The people 
who go there in the summer, returning year after 
year for long lifetimes, are bound in a brother- 
hood close and peculiar, so that, when they chance 
to encounter one another on the city streets dur- 
ing the winter, pleasure leaps up in their eyes, and 
they turn aside and immediately forget other 
claims. The place has laid its still influence com- 
mandingly over the depths of many scattered 
lives. Little by little, the land is bought up for 
summer cottages, or old farmhouses are made 
over, and the summer colony spreads. 

Time was when the social life of this valley 
was blithe and vigorous, the indigenous social life, 
native as rocks and trees. Old inhabitants shake 
their heads, looking wistfully back through the 
years. " Those were good days when the Craw- 
[27] 



The Edge of the Woods 

fords lived here, when Silas Wilkins was alive, 
when we had the village orchestra and the Shake- 
speare club." What is it that has so fatally hap- 
pened to occasion that hopeless past tense ? Silas 
Wilkins has died, to be sure, and no one could 
help that mortal accident. But the Crawfords 
have sold their farm to some people from New 
York, the Perkins family has decamped in favor 
of a Boston arrival, and Miss Lucy Jones has 
ceded her cottage for an artist's studio. 

In the summer all is abundant good cheer. In 
the little village and along the winding country 
roads the houses and cottages brim with eager 
life. Horses and carriages climb the hills, picnic 
parties explore the glens, diligent walkers tramp 
" round the square " in the thoroughly conscien- 
tious fashion of the " summer boarder." There is 
a certain informal degree of social life manifest 
in tea on the lawn, in games at the tiny club- 
house, in tennis and golf tournaments. Occa- 
sional entertainments, " for the benefit of the 
library," lay claim on the quite unusual talents of 
the summer residents, resulting in concerts of 
wonderful music, in masterly readings from the 
great poets, in exhibitions of pictures which later 
will adorn the walls of the New York Academy. 
" What a great thing it is for the valley," many a 
visitor has exclaimed, " that all these people 
should have settled here ! " 
[28] 



Closing the Country Home 

That is a natural first conclusion, inevitable to 
the urban mind ; but one has only to linger into 
the edges of winter a little to find himself ques- 
tioning its essential soundness. 

This winter season is one which we fair-weather 
sojourners complacently ignore. Our country 
year is but half a year, three seasons at the most. 
What happens after we close our houses and re- 
turn to our " sweet security of streets " we have 
not the least idea. No earth-child can realize very 
acutely that the moon has to consider and deal 
with a strange shadowed half which is just as much 
a part of its being as its familiar earthward face. 

We understand that something threatens in 
those great days of late October when, hurriedly 
packing, we glance out through our windows at 
bare-stripped hills, purple-black beneath flying 
clouds, at gaunt woods, " in the stormy east wind 
straining," at armies of scurrying leaves. But we 
do not linger to put to the test our shivering ap- 
prehensions. The wistful eyes of the country 
people might tell us a story if we cared to listen. 
How they dread the winter ! Their preparations 
for it are grave and carefully deliberate, begin- 
ning in the middle of autumn, lest something be 
forgotten, or lest the time prove too short and 
frost overtake the farmhouse unawares. 

" It's a regular campaign you have to plan, isn't 
it ? " I said to a farmer's wife, as I dropped in 
[29] 



The Edge of the Woods 

to see her one J^ovember day and was ushered 
into the kitchen. All the rooms in the front of 
the house were shut off, and the front door was 
locked for the winter. 

" Yes," she sighed, " we have to change all 
around, you see, and huddle close together. M}^ 
husband and I, with the two youngest children, 
sleep in that little room off the kitchen, and the 
others sleep just above; the stovepipe goes 
through their room. Even then, we often suffer 
with cold. I don't know as you'll hardly believe 
me, but one night last winter I left a fire banked 
up in the stove and the kettle on the griddle, and 
in the morning the coals were still alive, but the 
kettle was froze solid. 

" It isn't the cold I dread most, though," she 
went on after a moment ; " it's the aAvful loneli- 
ness. There's so few people left in the valley 
now after the first of November. You see how it 
is a little yourself, stayin' so late this year. 
There's nothin' lonesomer than a closed house, 
an' on some roads there ain't nothin' else hardly 
but closed houses. My ! how I hate to drive by 
'em in a winter twilight ! I think there ought to 
be a law to oblige city people to keep lights 
burnin' in their country homes all winter. Don't 
you suppose " — this with a sudden appealing 
turn — " you are ever goin' to want to stay with 
us all the year ? " 

[30] 



Closing the Country Home 

Was I ever going to want to, I wondered, as I 
walked home after this interview. Yes, I wanted 
to even then with at least one-half of my heart. 
The solemn November beauty is greater than all 
the light-hearted abundance of summer ; the lure 
of the winter is thrilling. If only my comrades 
would stay with me ! If only ! There I betrayed 
the need common to all our humanity, rural or 
urban, and quickened my steps to pass the closed 
houses, and shivered and was sad. The inesti- 
mable benefit accruing to our valley from my 
summer home and the homes of my friends seemed 
suddenly not so evident to me as I had always 
supposed it. If I were the valley, I know full 
well that I should prefer the old order of things, 
with houses open all the year round and filled 
with stout-hearted country people who loyally 
took storm and sunshine with me and gave me 
their whole endeavor, who wove a strong social 
life in my midst and made me a part of the world. 

Think what it is that we do in fact, we " lovers 
of the country " ! As soon as the way is conve- 
niently smooth for our delicate feet in the spring, 
we sweep in, usurping all the best sites, buying 
up the best farm-land. We blandly assume all 
authority, even controlling the social life, as if by 
divine right. The country people are shy and 
proud. Seeing us so abundantly willing to man- 
age the affairs of the valley, they retreat before 
[31] 



The Edge of the Woods 

us. They are quick to recognize any least conde- 
scension in our efforts to be " one with them," to 
" draw them out," and, perturbed and obstinate, 
they retire into the hollows of their hills. Even 
those of them who have travelled and know the 
ways of the world, never fully open out their lives 
to us so that the barrier disappears and we are no 
longer " city folks" to them but just plain every- 
day " folks." The relation between us is not the 
genuine unstudied one of fellow-townsmen, but at 
best a conscious adaptation. 

For the truth of the matter always is that we 
are not fellow-townsmen. No real valley dwellers 
are we who take the sweet of its life and leave 
the bitter doubly pungent. We speak of " our 
valley," " our hills," " our woods " ; but they are 
not in the very least ours ; the claim is presump- 
tuous. They are of course supremely His who 
made them ; and, after that, they are theirs who 
live rounded lives in their midst. 

To these latter should fall all rights of control- 
ling growth and change. The little valley of my 
affection has long desired a railroad. The reasons 
are many and excellent : to facilitate transporta- 
tion of farm products, to spare horse and man in 
the piercing winter cold, to make intercourse pos- 
sible between scattered farms (a country railroad 
often runs on the trolley principle of frequent 
stops) to communicate a little of the pulse of the 
[32] 



Closing the Country Home 

world. J^othing less than new life would be the 
gift of that road to the valley. Yet—" Never ! " 
exclaim the owners of country homes, with one 
voice and with a determination based on the tax 
list and reasonably sure of itself. Based on 
esthetic considerations too, of course, and quite 
conscientious. Shall the lovely valley be defiled, 
its sanctity invaded ? But there is a sanctity of 
hunger in the human heart which is a more 
august and reverend thing than any valley soli- 
tude. 

One wishes that the social reformers would 
turn their attention from city slums for a while 
and give the country their thoughtful consider- 
ation. There is great possibility and great need 
for readjustment here. Life in the country ought 
to be all that is sweet and wholesome and glad. 
Wordsworth realized this obligation and wrote of 
his high-souled farmers. But Crabbe, for all his 
lesser genius, looked more squarely into the face 
of fact when he sadly set forth : 

" The Village Life, and every care that reigns 
O'er youthful peasants and declining swains. 

" Ye gentle souls, who dream of rural ease, 
Whom the smooth stream and smoother sonnet 

please. 
Go ! if the peaceful cot your praises share. 
Go look within, and ask if peace be there.'' 
[33] 



The Edge of the Woods 

No, alas ! it is not there. The average country 
life is not a life of happiness. Hard work and 
poverty chain the body — and with the body the 
mind — to a hopeless, monotonous round. To see 
no possible end to one's task, nor any varying of 
it, is enough to kill the spirit. An impious, tragic 
distortion of values results from the lifelong 
absorption in material things, so that all the finer 
issues of life, those for which the soul was created, 
come to be scorned and neglected if not alto- 
gether ignored. To the average country person a 
dreamer is contemptible. Books and music have 
their place, but a scanty one, in the cracks of the 
day, or at its weary end. It actually comes to 
pass finally that the shell of life has all the im- 
portance, and the kernel shrivels and is cast away. 

The finer issues of life are perhaps, after all, a 
community product, a divine result of comrade- 
ship, of love and faith and intercourse, an urban 
growth rather than a rural. Scattered, lonely, 
separate lives cannot well attain it. This theory 
contradicts the poets, and that is another tragic 
and impious proceeding. But etymology bears 
it out. The one word civilization tells the whole 
of the story. 

They say that the state in which our valley 

lies is steadily degenerating, that crime is on the 

increase. That should be a shocking matter of 

concern to all of us who love the state and have 

[34] 



Closing the Country Home 

our summer homes there. What shall be done ? 
" A return to the soil " is everywhere cried as the 
remedy ; and perhaps we think w^e are meeting 
the need in the May to November return w^e 
make, in our " fancy farming." But half-way 
methods never succeed, and ours is no real 
return. What the valley needs is the whole al- 
legiance of the best of its native sons, who shall 
abide in it and work its weal instead of selling 
their houses and faring forth from it ; and of its 
sons by adoption too, for there is room for all 
who will come and_ work honestly. 

Just here comes in the great opportunity of the 
country home. Shall we make the valley our 
workroom or playground ? That is the question 
on which the whole issue depends. Certain it is 
that no lover who is worth his nectar fails to 
devote himself heart and soul to the good of his 
beloved; and, if our love for the country be 
real, we shall see to it that it profits by our 
presence in its midst. 

All this reasoning seems to point to one logical 
conclusion : that the country home be kept open 
through the year. After what has been said of 
the urban birth of the finer issues of life, the con- 
clusion sounds like a condemnation ; and indeed 
the lure of " the friendly town " is as strong as 
that of " the open road " to us of the modern 
world. But if those of us who have country 
[35] 



The Edge of the Woods 

homes stayed in the country together, we should 
create a community life, a civilization of numbers. 
The country people would swell our ranks — or we 
should swell theirs, which is the truer and assur- 
edly the more gracious way of putting the case — 
and the valley would have one established life, 
one purpose and one hope. The good old days 
might come again, or — since of course they never 
do that — better ones might develop. The wist- 
fulness might leave the eyes of the farmer folk 
and their hunger might be appeased by the con- 
stant presence of their kind. Crime is often 
enough but a desperate effort at self-defense from 
the arch-foe ennui. What if we of the country 
homes leave the path of attack open by our 
desertion, our positive infliction of loneliness 
through our negative absence ? The point is 
worth consideration. 

Nor need we suppose that our sacrifice (com- 
placent creatures that we are!) would be any 
greater than our gain if we stayed in the country 
all winter. A close and informal comradeship 
would grace our long seclusion. Apart from the 
hurry and noise of the city, we should have time 
to know one another, to build up a real society 
based on eternal things. Around our "neigh- 
borly open fires," abroad together on snow-shoes 
or skates, sharing the fight with the elements, we 
should have intercourse real and substantial, worth 
[ 36 ] 



Closing the Country Home 

everything else in life. Our books too — how we 
should revel in them, by the hour, by the day, 
with the snow falling softly outside and the wind 
in the chimney ! And the crisp morning's work 
at easel or desk, and the long cozy evenings ! 
Surely the life would be good. 

As for the beauty — do we understand what we 
forego when we turn away and leave the valley to 
winter ? Days of dazzling blue and white — a 
white world of silence beneath a blue sky in 
which the stars await only the swift going down 
of the sun to blaze forth, hanging in space. Soft 
gray days of whirling, muffling flakes ; dark 
fierce days of rushing winds. Winter woods 
to explore, winter brooks to follow, winter ponds 
to skim. King Winter is the greatest season 
of all the year, and we will have none of him. 

Then there is the first approach of spring, that 
most exquisite surprise. The earliest comers-back 
of us are never in time for this revelation ; it 
belongs to February. We feel it in our city 
streets and respond to it with a leap of the heart ; 
but what must it mean to be touched by it some 
gusty morning across snowy fields, and to burst 
out of a winter prison, rejoicing utterly ! 

As, sitting in my city apartment, I write this 

paper, the year is in its mid- winter. The beloved 

little valley lies at a distance among the hills. 

The deep snows wrap it, the silence broods, the 

[37] 



The Edge of the Woods 

evening lamps shine too far apart to be aware of 
one another. Along the roads and in the village, 
closed houses stand in cheerless gloom, forbidding 
presences. Loneliness, dreariness, and desertion ! 
While here hive we in our cozy city, safe and 
warm and happy together. The contrast gives 
one pause. 



[38] 



lY 
THE PASSING OF INDOORS 

INDOOES is going. We may as well make 
up our minds to this revolutionary conclusion, 
and accept it with such degree of hardy re- 
joicing or shivering regret as our natures prompt 
in us. 

The movement has been long under way, grad- 
ually working the perfect ejection which now 
seems at hand. Had we been far-sighted enough, 
we might long ago have recognized the dislodging 
process. It is hard to say just when it began. 
Surely not in the shaggy breasts of those rude 
ancestors of ours whom we hold in such veneration 
and to whose ways we seem to ourselves to be so 
wisely returning. They dragged their venison 
into the depths of a cave darker and closer than 
any house, and devoured it in seclusion. Perhaps 
it began in the San Marco Piazza at Venice, with 
the spreading of the little open-air tables under 
the colonnades. " So delightful ! So charming ! " 
Thus the tourists, as they sipped their coffee and 
dallied with their ices. They were right ; it was 
delightful and charming, and so it is to this day. 
But perhaps it was the thin edge of the wedge 
which is now turning us all out. 
[39] 



The Edge of the Woods 

Supper was the first regular meal to follow the 
open-air suggestion, country supper on the piazza 
in the warm summer evening. That was also 
delightful and not at all alarming. All nations 
and ages have practiced the sport of occasional 
festive repasts out-of-doors when the weather has 
permitted. But breakfast was not long in follow- 
ing suit ; and when dinner, that most conservative, 
most conventional of meals, succumbed to the 
outward pressure and spread its congealing gravies 
in the chilly air, we were in for the thing in good 
earnest, the new custom was on. No longer a 
matter of times and seasons, the weather had 
nothing to do with it now ; and in really zealous 
families the regular summer dining-room was out- 
of-doors. Summer and warmth are traditionally 
supposed to go together ; but they do not by any 
means always do so in New England, where bleak 
rains overtake the valleys and clearing north- 
west winds come racing keenly. It was soon 
necessary to introduce a new fashion in dinner 
garments : overcoats, sweaters, and heavy shawls, 
mufflers and hoods. 

'' Excuse me while I run up-stairs to get a pair 
of mittens ? " 

" Finish your soup first, dear ; it will be quite 
cold if you leave it." 

The adherents of the new doctrine were very 
conscientious and faithful, as was only to be ex- 
[40] 



The Passing of Indoors 

pected. We are a valiant race in the matter of 
our enthusiasms, and can be trusted to follow them 
sturdily, buckling on armor or overcoats or what- 
ever special equipment the occasion demands. 

Sleeping out-of-doors was the next phase in the 
open-air movement. That also began casually 
and charmingl3^ A wakeful dreamer lingered 
long in his hammock, watching the stars, musing 
in the still summer night, until, lo ! there was the 
dawn beginning behind the eastern hills. A 
happy experience. Not much sleeping about it — 
there is seldom much sleeping about real experi- 
ences — but so much pleasure that the heart said, 
" Go to ! why not have this good thing always ? 
Why not sleep out-of-doors every night ? " 
Which is of course exactly the way in which hu- 
man nature works : very reasonable, very sane, and 
convincing, but unfortunately never quite so suc- 
cessful as it ought to be. That which has blessed 
us once must be secured for our souls to feast on 
perpetually ; revelation must fold its wings and 
abide with us. So we soberly go to work and, by 
laying plans for the systematic recurrence of our 
great occasions, we strip from them all the de- 
light of the unexpected, all the poetry of chance. 

'' He who bends to himself a joy, 
Does the winged life destroy ; 
But he who kisses a joy as it flies, 
Lives in eternity's sunrise.'^ 
[41] 



The Edge of the Woods 

It is a pity that William Blake could not teach 
us that once for all. As a matter of fact, great 
occasions care nothing at all for our urging ; and 
a plan is an institution which they cordially abhor. 
The stars and the dawn do not condescend to such 
paraphernalia for waylaying them as sleeping- 
bags, rubber blankets, air-pillows, and mosquito 
netting. 

One experience of my own recurs to my mem- 
ory poignantly, and I think that I cannot do 
better than set it forth. I had passed an unfor- 
gettable night all alone in a meadow, detained by 
the evening into " solemn midnight's tingling si- 
lences," and then into the austere dawn. It was 
an episode that should have sealed my lips ; but I 
profanely spoke of it, and at once the contagion 
of interest spread through the little village. 

" What fun ! Did you wear your rubbers ? 
Did you sit in a chair? I should think that 
would have been much more comfortable. Well, 
I tell you what, let's do it together — a lot of us, 
so we won't be afraid — and let's climb a moun- 
tain. The sunrise will be beautiful from a moun- 
tain." 

We did it ; I blush to confess that some twenty- 
five of us did it. For the better part of two 
weeks we planned and discussed the excursion — a 
full moon being in the program — and we left no 
possible accident unforeseen, no event unprovided 
[42] 



The Passing of Indoors 

for. On the auspicious night, the procession that, 
toiling and puffing, made the ascent of Haystack 
— the favored mountain selected for the pedestal 
of our rapture— offered as sad, and withal as 
funny, an affront as the secrecy of beauty ever 
received. Blankets, steamer-rugs, pillows, shawLs, 
hammocks, whiskey flasks — how we groaned be- 
neath these burdens ! Of course we lost the way 
and had to beat the woods in every direction ; we 
were tired and hot and — cross. But we knew 
what our cue was ; and when at last we straggled 
forth on the top of the mountain, we collected 
ourselves in a solemn group and said, " How beau- 
tiful ! " 

It was beautiful ; therein lay just the fineness 
of the night's triumph over us — over me at least, 
I cannot speak for the other twenty-four. Be it 
said in parentheses that, to this day, whenever 
any one mentions our night on Haystack, we all 
lift our eyes in ecstasy, and no one of us has ever 
confessed any sense of lack. But honestly, hon- 
estly at the last (dear stalwart relief of honesty ! ) 
I affirm that to me the experiment was a failure. 
The scene was so beautiful that my spirit should 
have been lifted out of my body, and would have 
been, had it watched alone, had it not already ex- 
hausted itself in plans and expectations. Beneath 
us lay a far-spreading sea of misty, rolling hills, 
all vague and blended in the light of the soaring 
[43] 



The Edge of the Woods 

moon ; above us stretched such a sweep of sky as 
only mountain tops command ; around us, silence, 
silence. Yet the unstrenuous orchard at home, 
with its tranquil acceptance of such measure of 
sunset light as was granted it and of the moon's 
presence when she rose above the apple trees, 
would have conveyed the night's message a thou- 
sand times more clearly. 

It is seldom worth while to describe minutely 
any failure of the spirit, and tragedy is not the 
aim of this paper ; but one slight episode of the 
dawn following that fatal night must be related. 
We were gathered on the eastern edge of our 
mountain, a tousled, gray, dishevelled lot, heavy- 
eyed and weary. Does the reader understand the 
significance of the phrase, " to prevent the 
dawn " ? He probably does if he has stood and 
waited for the sun to rise — or, for that matter, the 
moon or any of the constellations. All heavenly 
bodies retard their progress when they are waited 
for. A dozen times we warned one another — 
" Surely now ! " — as with strained, intent faces 
we gazed into the quickening east ; yet no glitter- 
ing, lambent rim slid up to greet our eyes. 

At last a decent comely cloud came to the res- 
cue of the sun, halting and embarrassed, and 
settled snugly all about the mountain of the day- 
spring. Into this the sun was born, so obscurely 
that it rode high above the mountain's edge, 
[44] 



The Passing of Indoors 

shorn and dull, a rubber ball, before we discov- 
ered it. " Why — why " some one stammered ; 

and there was a dramatic pause. Brave and de- 
termined though we were in our pursuit of ecstasy, 
we could not burst forth into Memnon statue song 
at the sight of that belated orange. "Lo, the 
Lord Sun ! " Not at all. It was the merest var- 
let. In this dilemma of our hearts, a funny little 
wailing cry came from the edge of the cliif : " I 
want my money back ! " It was a perfect com- 
mentary on the w^hole situation, as fine and hu- 
morous an utterance as the foiled occasion could 
have asked. We laughed at it, and the air was 
straightway clearer for us. Then w^e trooped 
down the mountain-side, and went home to bed. 

Of course I am not unaware that some of my 
readers are probably very impatient with me, if 
they have taken pains to peruse thus far this 
earnest exposition. They declare that the out- 
door movement is not primarily one of sentiment, 
but of health and happiness ; and that the story 
just related is aside from the point. That may 
be true. I certainly stand in respect of the great 
claims of the physical side of the subject, and 
would not criticize them. Bv all means, let 
people be as well as possible. But it is still the 
other side, the side of sentiment and rapture, that 
is most frequently and pleadingly urged upon me. 

It is pitiful how helpless w^e sober, conservative 

[45] 



The Edge of the Woods 

people are against the invasions of a new enthu- 
siasm. I still sleep in my bed, in my room ; but 
the satisfaction I used to take in the innocent 
practice is broken by haunting fears that I may 
not be able to keep it up. My friends will not 
let me alone. 

" Why don't you sleep out here, on this little 
upper piazza ? Precisely the place for you ! I 
don't understand how you can ignore such an op- 
portunity." 

" Well, you see," — my first answer is glib — 
" the piazza overhangs the road, and the milk 
wagons go by very early. I don't want to get up 
at four o'clock every morning." 

"They couldn't see much of you, I should 
think," — with a thoughtful measuring glance — 
"not more than your toes and the tip of your 
nose." 

" Oh, thank you, that's quite enough ! " 

" Well, you might saw off the legs of a cot, to 
bring it below the railing. Or just a mattress 
spread on the floor would do very well." 

Just a mattress spread on the floor! That 
closes the argument. I have no spirit left to 
suggest any other objections to these dauntless 
souls: such as the rain — the piazza has no roof. 
Undoubtedly I should be told that a cold bath 
would be distinctly a gain, simplifying the toilet 
operations of the succeeding morning. There is 
[46] 



The Passing of Indoors 

no course left me but that final one — which 
should in honesty have come first — of damning 
myself by the hopeless assertion, " I don't want 
to sleep out-of-doors." This locks the argument, 
and the barrier stands complete, shutting me off 
in a world by myself, interrupting the genial flow 
of sympathetic friendship. But I love my 
friends, and I do not like to lose their sympathy. 
Therefore it follows that I tremble for my repose 
in my bed. I fear I shall yet utter midnight 
sighs on that piazza floor. 

Indoors, dear indoors ! I wish that I might 
plead its cause a little here. Does no one ever 
pause to reflect that there never was any outdoors 
at all until indoors was created ? The two had a 
simultaneous birth; but it was an appurtenance 
of the latter that marked the distinction and gave 
the names. That might have seemed a little 
humiliating to any creatures less generous than 
woods and mountains. They had been here from 
the beginning, ages and ages in glorious life, and 
they were given their first generic name, found 
their first classification, all of them in a lump 
together (what a lump ! ) as the other side of a 
fragile barrier to a mushroom construction. One 
wonders that those who so highly exalt the out- 
doors nowadays do not find some better title for 
it than its dooryard term. But those who love 
the indoors too, though they may smile at the 
[47] 



The Edge of the Woods 

calm presumption of its dubbing the universe, 
accept the conclusion without any question. Man 
is after all the creature of creatures, and his life 
is of first importance. We do not hear that the 
woodchuck speaks of out-hole, or the bird of out- 
tree. 

Such life of man is an inner thing, intensely 
inner ; its essence lies in its inwardness. It can 
hardly know itself " all abroad " ; as soon as it 
came to self-consciousness, it must needs have 
devised for itself a shelter, a refuge, not only 
from storm and cold but from the distracting 
variety of the extensive world. Indoors is really 
an august symbol, a grave and reverend thing. 
It stands for the separate life of man, apart from 
(though still a part of, too) the rest of the uni- 
verse. Take any one room inhabited daily by a 
person of strong individuality — how alive it is! 
How brisk and alert in the very attitudes of the 
chairs and pictures! Or, more happily, how 
serene and full of repose ! Morbid and passion- 
ate, flippant, austere, boisterous, decorous — any- 
thing, everything which a human being may be, 
that may a room be also. 

It is hard to understand how any person can 
fail to respond to the warm appeal of his own 
abode. Say that one has been abroad all day 
(another term that depends upon the house for 
its meaning), climbing the mountains, exploring 
[48] 



The Passing of Indoors 

the woods, ravishing eyes and heart with the 
beauty of the excellent world. Late afternoon 
comes at last, and fatigue droops upon the flesh. 
Enough ! Even the spirit's cry finds a pause. 
Enough, enough ! The wide world suddenly 
spreads so vast that it overwhelms and frightens ; 
there is something pitiless in the reach of the un- 
bounded sky. Then, as fast as they can, the lag- 
ging feet make for a point on the hillside where 
the eyes can command the valley ; and swiftly, 
eagerly flies the glance to one dear accustomed 
goal. A white house nestled among the trees — 
that is all, yet it thrills the heart with a potent 
summons which mountain peaks and sunsets do 
not know. Home ! Ah, hurry, then ! 

Down the hill, across the pasture, along the road, 
in at the gate, and up the two marble steps. The 
front door stands unconcernedly open. The house 
makes no stir at receiving back its inmate, whose 
life it has held and brooded upon during his 
absence, waiting to reinvest him with it when he 
wants it again ; but there is everywhere a quiet 
sense of welcome, a content of returning. The 
clock ticks steadily in the hall, its hands approach- 
ing the genial hour of supper time. Within the 
open library door the books dream on the shelves. 
Little sounds of a tranquil preparation come from 
the dining-room ; the teakettle sings, the black 
kitten purrs. Blessed indoors ! It draws a veil 
[49] 



The Edge of the Woods 

gently over the tired head, bewildered with much 
marvelling, it lays a cool hand over the eyes, 
saying, " Now rest, rest." It is like the Guardian 
Angel in Browning's poem. 

After supper, one sits by the lamp and reads 
peacefully. All the rest of the family read too, 
gathered around the big table. The books and 
the pictures look on benignly, and even the 
furniture is instinct with a mute eloquence of com- 
panionship. The song of the night insects throbs 
without, and millers hurl themselves with soft 
thuds against the windows ; an owl mutters to 
himself in the maple tree. But not for anything 
would one go out, not for anything would one 
leave this glowing, brooding, protecting indoors 
which one has regained. After a while one goes 
up-stairs and lays oneself in the safe white bed in 
one's own room. The windows are open to the 
night, but solid walls are all round about ; and 
before the sleepily closing eyes, one's own peculiar 
cherished belongings gleam in the creeping moon- 
light. Into the very heart of one's life one has 
returned at the close of the day, and there one goes 
to sleep. " In returning and rest shall ye be 
saved ; in quietness and in confidence shall be your 
strength." 

And we will not ? Is the discouraged clause, 
promptly succeeding to that most beautiful verse of 
Isaiah, true, then, of us ? Are we going to despoil 
[50] 



The Passing of Indoors 

oui^elves of all the poetry, the intimate meaning 
of our indoor life ? 

" A place in which to dress and undress — that is 
all I want of a house,'' said an energetic young 
woman. 

A bath-house would suit her perfectly. Per- 
haps that is what we are coming to : rows of bath- 
houses, with sleeping-bags stored up in them 
against the night. Alas for the pictures ! Alas 
for the music ! Alas for the books ! 

The books ! There is a happy suggestion. I 
believe the books will save us. There is cer- 
tainly nothing that objects with greater decision 
and emphasis to sleeping out-of-doors than a book. 
The effect of leaving one inadvertently in the 
orchard over night has a final melancholy about 
it which most book lovers poignantly understand. 
Could books be printed on India rubber and bound 
in waterproof cloth ? The device does not sound 
attractive enough to be feasible even in these 
practical days. IS'o, I do believe the books will 
save us. They are a great army, and they have 
power; theirs is a steady conservative hold on 
their restless owners. 

"I sometimes think I'd give up housekeeping 
and not have a home any more," a woman said to 
me once, " if it weren't for my books. But I can't 
part with them, nor yet can I get them all into 
one room ; so here I stav." 
[51] 



The Edge of the Woods 

" Buy books ? " a New York man exclaimed. 
" No ; it hurts them too much to move them." 

Which guileless inference has caused me many 
a thoughtful smile. 

Essentially human — with the humanity of the 
ages, not merely of a few decades — books under- 
stand what man really wants, and what he must 
have, better than he does himself. In the serene 
and gracious indoors they took up their places 
long ago ; and there they remain, and there they 
will always make shift to abide. Perhaps, if we 
sit down close at their feet, we, too, may abide. 



[52] 



URSA MINOR 

UESA MAJOR adorns the sky, obvious, 
glittering, clearly defined, a constellation 
about which there can never be any 
doubt. Every one is familiar with it. Even 
those people who " really know nothing about the 
stars " modify their disclaimer by adding, " except 
of course the Big Dipper." Just as those other 
people who do not read widely are yet familiar 
with Dickens's characters? Precisely. It was 
this analogy that held my mind as I lay in the 
orchard one evening not long ago, tracing out 
Ursa Minor and Lyra, and trying to find some 
significance in the curves of Andromeda. 

It was not a clear evening — too dreamy and 
warm — and I was somewhat put to it to draw the 
outlines of the heavenly figures. "Bind the 
cluster of the Pleiades ? " Indeed, I could not at 
all. But I sat up suddenly once to shake a grass- 
hopper out of my hair, and there before me lay 
Ursa Major — obvious, glittering, as I have said, 
emphatically itself. 

"If it's constellations you're after," it said, 
" what in the worlds is the matter with me ? 
Here I am, definite ; I can defy the mists of the 
[53] 



The Edge of the Woods 

evening; I plant myself firmly above the hills. 
You waste your time groping among those 
other vague glimmerings yonder. At best, they 
mean nothing unless you apply a mind-splitting 
force of imagination. Dragons and lyres, indeed ! 
Look at me. I'm a dipper, I am. Take hold of 
my handle, and drink reality." 

It was true ; the Big Dipper was a dipper. It 
lay nicely balanced across the sky, pointing up- 
ward, with time-honored accuracy, to the North 
Star, a useful, an excellent constellation, conspicu- 
ous and exact. Yet, oh, how it bored me ! I lay 
down again, and waited until a cloud had passed 
by between me and Ursa Minor, and then gave 
myself over to the gentler influence of the lesser 
group of stars. It did not point to the North 
Star, no ; it did not need to, for it had snared the 
star closely in its tail. 

That is the way — so I pondered, sunk in a fra- 
grant re very in the grass, with only the flash of a 
meteor to startle me now and then — that is the 
way with a good many of the people that I know. 
Great bears and little bears, major and minor — 
they divide the world between them. Not 
evenly. A huge section of space has to be given 
over to the aggressive monopoly of the Great Bear ; 
no other constellations swarm and hide about its 
clear-cut corners. But the heavens are wide ; to 
the south, east, west, the other stars gather and 
[54] 



Ursa Minor 



come and go, herding in friendly fashion so close 
that their outlines merge and blend, and they 
weave one splendid pattern of glory across the 
purple void. How alluring, how interesting Ursa 
Minor ! How tedious Ursa Major — and yet how 
indispensable ! Every age is the age of Ursa 
Major, because, for one thing, it will have it so. 
But Ursa Minor has captured and held much of 
the love of the world. 

It is the minor poet whose use — or whose suf- 
fering — of the attribute of falling short is most 
familiar to us. Yet he stands by no means alone 
in his possession of the quality ; all classes of men 
share it with him. Perhaps it may fairly be 
questioned whether that which indicates a lack 
should have anything but a negative significance, 
should be considered a quality at all. But a state 
of being which is shared by ninety-nine one-hun- 
dredths of mankind cannot escape a certain 
robustness ; and, if it is negative, then negation is 
a force to be reckoned with. 

We are rather hard on the minor poet ; at best, 
we only tolerate him. But perhaps we have not 
considered the general uses of minority, the uni- 
versal need of the blessed estate. Its defects are 
obvious; therefore they may be ignored in our 
present discussion. It is precisely the obvious from 
which we would escape. But its merits lure us 
to contemplation. Some of them are so beautiful 
[55] 



The Edge of the Woods 

that they almost cause the condition which they 
adorn to transcend its proper bounds and to be- 
come the most superior kind of superiority. 

There is, for instance, that very trait hinted at 
in the paragraph above — or, rather, that lack of 
a trait (for, in dealing with Ursa Minor, one must 
more often speak negatively than positively) — 
that fact that there is nothing obvious about it 
but its defects. How very pleasant that is ! To 
find nothing about a man that bores you but his 
defects ! The intelligent world instinctively 
avoids that which bores it ; and no man could 
ask better fortune than that his friends should 
ignore his faults. It is when they have to ignore 
his virtues that he is in a desperate case. 

Poor Ursa Major cannot fairly be held to blame 
for the contrary state of affairs which obtains 
with it. It has to be obvious ; that is its mission. 
Nature has carved it conspicuously, and has set it 
prominently to work; it would defeat its own 
destiny if it tried to be quiet about it. That 
North Star is an important thing. People are 
careless, and they get lost; and then they are 
very stupid and cannot find their way again. It 
is absolutely essential that somebody or something 
stand forth very boldly, not to say baldly, and 
point an infallible finger in one direction. But 
people are not always lost; and, when they are 
sitting safely in their front yards or lying in their 
[56] 



Ursa Minor 



orchards, they are sometimes apt to grow weary 
of perpetual North Star. 

" Behold me ! " Ursa Major cries, in season and 
out of season, addressing the orchard as com- 
mandingly as the mountain. "I am the Great 
Bear, and I point the way to the North Star." 

" The North Star ? " Ursa Minor murmurs. 
" Oh ! the North Star. I believe I've got it some- 
where in my tail." 

Dear Ursa Minor ! 

But there is no doubt about it that to be free 
not to take themselves too seriously is a gracious 
privilege appertaining to the minor people, a 
privilege which conduces much to the general 
cause of ease and friendliness. Also to be free to 
come and go. One " always knows where to 
find " Ursa Major ; one has but to stand facing 
the north in a general fashion, and, unless the sky 
is quite covered with clouds, there the constella- 
tion waits. Waits ? Nay, rather, advances to 
meet one, delaying not to be wooed. Now, it is also 
true of Ursa Minor that one may know where to 
find it ; but whether or not one does find it is 
another question. Unless the brilliant mood of 
the night robs all the stars of reserve, it always 
has to be sought ; and, when found, it has to be 
held with the eye, lest its faint outlines vanish 
again. Now, I protest, this is decent of it ; 
decent and self-respecting and independent and 
[57] 



The Edge of the Woods 

interesting. A little provoking, too, now and 
then ; but provocation has excellent uses. 

" Why, I'm not important," it says, when one 
pleads earnestly with it to stay a while. " It's my 
brother that counts ; he is the real thing ; go and 
talk with him. His ofGLce hours run all night 
long. He'll tell you everything you want to 
know. I only repeat his main ideas feebly after 
him." 

Nothing can persuade it that one may prefer its 
own gentler, more indirect, more luminous exposi- 
tion of North Star wisdom to the hard-and-fast 
statements of Ursa Major. Therefore, one has 
to coax them from it, and that's where the fun 
comes in. 

Who does not know families which consist of 
one dominant personality and an ineffective com- 
pany of eclipsed entities ? " The Browns ? Oh, 
yes, Miss Martha Brown. What a force she is ! " 
" The Smiths ? I think you must refer to Mr. 
Wilson Smith." When I hear people talk thus of 
some family unfamiliar to me, I know my quarry 
from afar and seek an introduction. Past Miss 
Martha and Mr. Wilson, I make my way as soon 
as I can ; and, in the background of their great- 
ness, I never fail to find minor brothers and sisters, 
even a minor mother or two, who charm me 
utterly. 

Companionability is another agreeable trait of 
[58] 



Ursa Minor 



Ursa Minor. Ursa Major stands off by itself, 
always preoccupied, always on duty, never with 
time to spare. The major people of one's ac- 
quaintance do greatly oppress and paralyze one 
with their absorption in their North Stars. They 
pretend to allow one to come and see them and 
talk about something else once in a while; but 
one cannot do it ; one is overwhelmed by the brief- 
ness of the interview granted and by the trivial 
nature of the ideas which one has brought to dis- 
cuss. This is mortifying : to stand in the presence 
of greatness, mewing like an unhappy kitten that 
opens its mouth but utters no sound. Yet there 
are many who cannot rid themselves of the 
curious paradoxical panic of haste and reluctance 
which the North Star breeds in them. 

But the minor person, the dear minor person — 
how comfortable he is ! Three or four hours 
more or less — it doesn't matter ; spend the day, 
stay overnight. The genial latitude of the situa- 
tion gives time for a score of ideas to bud, open, 
bloom, and fall. Moreover, there is no slightest 
demand that ideas shall be forthcoming at all, if 
the wit prefers to lie fallow. This latter point is 
very unportant ; I am not sure that it does not 
mark the chiefest merit of the minor person. His 
modest attitude towards life is one of an open 
receptiveness to whatever comes his way. He 
likes to talk and laugh, ves ; but he also likes 
[59] 



The Edge of the Woods 

very well to be silent. He even makes no objec- 
tion to downright dullness now and again, to real 
stupidity. Stupidity and dullness, he holds, are 
integral parts of human nature ; and, without 
them, any man is (or would be) but half a 
man. The result of this tolerant wisdom is that 
the minor person is often far more stimulating 
than the major. 

Wisdom! One wonders if the sta,rs are as 
concerned for this attribute as we have felt it our 
duty to be since the days of Solomon. Perhaps 
that North Star of theirs is wisdom. If so, there 
is significance in the wide variety of relations 
which they maintain with it. Ursa Major pro- 
claims the ]N'orth Star, stands off at a distance 
from it and points to it ostentatiously. Ursa 
Minor hooks the North Star in its tail, and turns 
its back on it. 

It would seem that Ursa Major must know all 
that there is to be known about this particular 
point of light, since it travels around it continu- 
ally, viewing it from all sides. But, in the fact 
that it always views it, lies a limitation. It never 
turns to look off and see what effect the North 
Star is having upon the other constellations, what 
are their various attitudes towards it, nor what 
they are doing among themselves off there in the 
heavenly fields. As a matter of fact, some of 
them are so placed that they cannot arrive at the 
[60] 



Ursa Minor 



North Star at all from the standpoint of Ursa 
Major. They have to make their own ways to it 
from other directions. To them it is, therefore, a 
more important circumstance that Ursa Minor has 
leashed the star, and gently holds it from running 
away, than that Ursa Major points to it. Thei-e 
is this to be said for Ursa Minor : with all its 
seeming indifference, it does maintain the North 
Star. It may turn its back on its prize and ignore 
it ; it may subdue its own shadowy outlines to the 
vanishing point, and lose its identity in the mist ; 
somehow or other that star persists, carelessly 
flung on high for the careful pointing of Ursa 
Major. 

It is in the matter of their wisdom that minor 
people come nearest to defeating their mission in 
life and becoming superior. But the general na- 
ture of their wisdom saves them and keeps them 
down. On any given subject under discussion, 
some major person can always instruct them. 
They never know as much about flowers as the 
botanist, as much about music as the composer, as 
much about sickness as the trained nurse ; so that 
they are continually to be found in their heaven - 
ordained position of deference towards some one. 
But in the knowledge of combinations, of tenden 
cies, of ultimate issues, in the reckoning of aver- 
ages, they are unsurpassed. In the complex ques- 
tions of every-day life, who would not rather 
[61] 



The Edge of the Woods 

have the advice of an experienced minor person 
than of a major person with a theory to prove ? 

There is one more trait of Ursa Minor — that 
which includes and presupposes all the other char- 
acteristics, their fine flower and, at the same time, 
their seed — which I would fain, 3^et dare not, 
handle. How shall I even speak its name without 
doing harm ? A delicate quality, the very last 
attribute of human nature to stand analysis and 
discussion, it has yet been subjected to the rash- 
est, most shameful exploitation in these latter 
days. It has been almost done to death, nay, 
sometimes, entirely so. Surely the reader knows 
what I mean. He has read about it in countless 
books, has noted its capitals S and H in magazine 
articles without end, has even heard it earnestly 
recommended from the pulpit. Look up at Ursa 
Minor and see how its stars twinkle among them- 
selves — not keenly like Ursa Major, flashing an 
obvious sheaf of rays from every well-marked 
corner, but dimly, deliciously, through-and- 
through, so that the separate stars sometimes dis- 
appear in the effulgence of their mingled rays. 
That is — ah ! speak it softly, whisper it — that is a 
Sense of Humor. 

A pretty good showing, is it not, which we have 

found for minority in this orchard meditation ? 

We have actually had to be every moment on our 

guard lest the terms of our discussion slip from 

[62] 



Ursa Minor 



us, become confused, and — presto ! change ! — the 
minor person appear as the major. Such a sudden 
shifting of values as that, such a whimsical pranc- 
ing of paradox, would be only the method which 
life habitually employs for our edification, and 
probably it approaches truth more nearly than 
any other ; but we are not up to it, we slaves to 
human reason. Consistency is still the bugbear of 
our small minds. Minority being granted, then, 
as a lesser estate than majority, we have examined 
it and we have seen that it has such merits that no 
phase of life can dispense with it. No phase ? 
Well, yes, there is one at which I hinted some 
paragraphs back. Perhaps, if we return to it 
now, it also will yield to our argument. 

I said that we were apt to be hard on the minor 
poet. We are ; and on the minor musician and 
the minor artist. Our general verdict seems to be 
that, however useful the minor person may be in 
the other departments of life, he is de trojp in the 
arts ; that, unless a man can make of himself a 
really first-rate poet or painter, he has no business 
to meddle with rhymes or pigments at all. But 
we do not stop to consider what an unkind treat- 
ment this is to give Melpomene and Euterpe, nor 
what an estimate we hereby tacitly make of the 
natures of these muses. Are they so inferior, 
then, to the other gods and goddesses that we 
may presume to scant their worship to less than 
[63] 



The Edge of the Woods 

the whole of mankind ? Are they, on the other 
hand, such high prigs that they will have none 
of the company of common folk? Cruel and 
shameful assumptions, these, if we really made 
them. But I think that we are only thought- 
less about our judgment in the matter. Not in- 
ferior to Yenus and Ceres do we hold the Dames 
of Parnassus, but even superior in a way, cer- 
tainly different and deserving of peculiar honor. 
Alas ! poor ladies, we therefore commend them to 
the exclusive companionship of major people. No 
pleasant relaxation for them, no light-hearted 
dallyings with restful dullness ; nothing but North 
Star forever and ever, continually North Star. 

It is well that the gods are above human dis- 
posals, and that the muses have always been 
traditionally willful. The case might be really 
serious with them if they had to obey our decrees. 
But they are entirely independent. They know 
the value of the minor person, and they visit him 
freely. In fact, if we argue candidly, they give us 
the best of reasons for supposing that they prefer 
minor people to major. Why, else, should they 
every year seek and summon a score of the former 
to one of the latter ? It is always fair to assume 
that the guests one meets in a drawing-room are 
the hostess's chosen friends ; and goddesses, like 
mortals, are known by the company they keep. 

Of course they prefer the minor person ! They 
[64] 



Ursa Minor 



know what they are about. It is he who serves 
them most whole-heartedly, putting forth the 
greatest effort for the least reward. It is he who 
soothes them and keeps them sane, even now and 
then letting them go to sleep in his restful presence. 
An out and out genius must be a severe strain on 
his poor muse. 

The fields of art are- spacious and open, and 
many are called thereto. But few are chosen? 
Perhaps ; but the calling is the vital thing. There 
may be honor in being chosen — honor and assur- 
ance and joy — but not much credit in the long 
run ; the ultimate credit lies with him who, once 
called, can be trusted to follow the magic lure 
forever without reward. That is, without other 
reward. 

For my part, I think that Euterpe is so far from 
being a snob that she does not scorn the humblest 
instrument in the world which touches some heart 
into responsive song. The hand-organ, then ? 
Surely, yes, the hand-organ, with the children 
about it ; the brass band, flooding the street with 
a sudden tide of hope and buoyancy, lifting the 
heads of the scattered pedestrians and binding 
their disconnected footsteps into a transient 
march ; even the penny whistle, if so it awaken 
some wisp of a dream in the brain of him who 
blows it. That is the errand of art : to communi- 
cate life, to awaken dreams. It is hard to see 
[65] 



The Edge of the Woods 

how it is to deny some title of its nobility to any- 
thing which achieves the end, no matter by what 
means. 

" If only there were not such a host of scribblers 
and daubers nowadays ! " the dissatisfied critic 
sighs. If only there were not — well, what then ? 
Is the world's creative, artistic power to be con- 
ceived as a fixed and limited quantity, like its 
supply of marble and coal, like the currency of its 
nations ; so that, if every one has a little, no one 
can have a great deal ? If all the copiers in the 
Louvre firmly threw their brushes away, if the 
poetasters refused to fill the left-over corners in 
the magazines, would a Michaelangelo straightway 
appear, would a Shakespeare lift up his voice ? 
The experiment would certainly be an interesting 
one to make ; and, such is the modesty and good- 
will of the minor person in general, that he could 
probably very easily be induced to refrain from 
expression long enough to put the thing to the 
test. What a holiday the reviewers would have ! 
The magazines would suspend their issues; the 
bookshops would close ; the annual art exhibitions 
would languish ; the popular music halls would 
shut down, and bid their frequenters patronize the 
Symphony Concerts — where the bewildered crea- 
tures would yawn for a few helpless moments, and 
then drift out into the street. 

But what if the waters, left to themselves, 
[66] 



Ursa Minor 



refused to congregate in one living pool, and pre- 
ferred to stagnate ? What if the heavenly light 
which had flashed from so many mirrors and bits 
of glass a little while ago and had made the world 
such a sparkling place, withheld its radiance now 
because it found no reflecting surfaces? This 
might happen. Nay, as a fact, of course it would 
happen ; for art is not a quantity, but a spirit, in- 
creasing with use, like Dante's love ; and the more 
there is of it, the more there will always be. 

What a prolonged discussion ! I fall back in 
the orchard grass, and look up, and catch Ursa 
Minor's eye, twinkling more than ever. 

" I'm sure I'm much obliged," it says. " You 
are really very kind to take all this trouble." 



[67] 



VI 
WOOD MAGIC 

IF one had to choose — which Heaven forbid ! 
— among the beautiful things of earth, my 
choice would always fall on the woods. I 
find their summons more imperative and their 
high ministry more inevitable than the operation 
of any other influence. Right certain am I, too, 
that I am blessed by the immediate neighborhood 
of the most beautiful woods in the world. 

When they call me, I have to go — no matter 
what other plans I had harbored, no matter even, 
I fear, what duties seem to lie at my hand. The 
claim is transcendent, and restlessness takes pos- 
session of me unless I answer it. 

Out by the side gate, and up the road, through 
a pair of bars to the left, and across a climbing 
pasture. Then under more bars, and up a hill 
grown thick with shrubby cinquefoil. From the 
depths of a murmuring gorge a little brook salutes 
the path. I pause to salute it briefly in turn, 
mindful of many past sessions of joy when the 
open-air mood was upon me and I climbed no 
farther than this. But the immediate call of the 
woods permits no long delay, and I hasten on up 
the hill. 

[68] 



Wood Magic 



Arrived at a certain turn in the path, I pause 
again and look back to see how the valley has 
widened at my feet, unrolling its fair, shining, 
cloud-swept meadows, and how the mountains 
across the way have grown in massiveness. Then 
I cross the brook on a tumble-down bridge of rough 
gray planks, and come to a stop at a pair of bars 
between two sentinel spruces. 

These bars are fastened. I like to think that 
the precaution has a reason which concerns not 
altogether the intrusions of wandering cattle, but 
also has an aim to prevent the too hasty approach 
of human feet to the sacred forest. Beguilingly 
as the w^oods are calling — " Come ! Come ! " — I 
am glad to be brought to an utter pause, to stand 
with my arms on the topmost bar, musing a few 
minutes. Then, with due humility, I bow my 
head and creep under the barrier. Slowly I cross 
a small open space, vibrant with sunshine and little 
motions of bird and shadow, the Gothic arch of 
the forest entrance rising higher above my head 
as I approach ; devoutly, holding my breath a 
little, I enter the mossy, branching way, and the 
woods receive me. 

Generally I at once sit down on a fallen log. 
The dim place, green and flickering, awes me, and 
I suffer soft shock of change and readjustment. 
For several moments, while my open-air thoughts 
are hurrying in from their wide wanderings, I am 
[69] 



The Edge of the Woods 

all plastic, without form, without identity, bewil- 
dered in the sudden spell of secrecy and silence. 
Then it is that the forest lays hold upon me, shap- 
ing me out of my opportune chaos to its own great 
ends, so that I become in very truth its creature. 
When at last, once more self-conscious and aware, 
I rise and take my way in among the shadows, I 
am subdued, discreet, infinitely possessed. 

What richness in the life of a forest ! Not a 
flaunting, lavish display which hastens to be- 
stow itself, but a better guerdon of hid treasure 
which must be desired and sought. Nor always 
found, either — this shy, elusive reward of the 
woods ; one may all too frequently seek and seek 
in vain. It is in a mood of measureless patience 
that one should tread the green, silent ways, con- 
tent to forego, content to find that which had not 
been promised nor expected at all. For the wood 
delights in surprises. With all its gravity and 
reserve, it has a certain whimsical touch which 
has made it the recognized fit abode of fairies the 
world over. I do not know how many times I 
once wandered about a partridge's nest without 
seeing it, how many times I stood and gazed 
directly at it. It shaped itself out of the dead 
leaves before me with a suddenness which might 
have led me to think that it had been created that 
moment ; but, from the fixed gaze of the brown 
bird, crouching low and spreading herself, I knew 
[70] 



Wood Magic 



that the poor troubled mother had been watching 
me long. She had done her best to keep her little 
establishment safe in the obliteration of the forest's 
unity ; what tricksy turn of circumstance had 
betrayed her to me ? Before I turned away, I 
counted the trees in a line from the fence, that I 
might know how to find the nest again ; but I 
think that was a mistake. One should accept the 
wood's fav^ors as they come, setting up no claim 
for repetition, never assuming, in ponderous, 
logical, human fashion, that, because a secret has 
once been whispered, it is therefore out and cannot 
revert and become a secret again. Once a secret, 
always a secret in the dealing of the woods. That 
partridge's eggs never hatched, and I have always 
had an uneasy suspicion that their miscarriage 
may have had something to do with my occasional 
observation, as I stood at a very respectful distance 
and looked at their nest. I do not see how this 
could have been so, I earnestly hope that it was 
not ; and yet I feel vaguely guilty. If I had 
abused the confidence of the forest, somebody had 
to be punished ; and, in woods as in cities, it is 
not always the sinner who is visited with retribu- 
tion. Poor partridge ! Her loss is one of the 
mysteries that I look to the Day of Judgment to 
clear up for me. 

All sorts of flowers wait — and ignore — discov- 
ery in the woods. I know their seasons pretty 
[71] 



The Edge of the Woods 

well, and permit myself to attend upon them, 
with no insistence, but with an open, docile readi- 
ness to enjoy them if they are so disposed. The 
bloodroot leads the spring-beauty ; the anemone 
and the dog-tooth violet follow along, and the 
lordly jack-in-t he-pulpit. Meantime, the ferns un- 
roll their fronds and fill the shadows with their 
delicate mist of green, fit setting for the show}'^ 
orchid which arrives in June. Showy ! What 
kind of an adjective is that for the finest flower- 
spirit of the woods ? So slender, low, and deli- 
cate that the seeker must wander all up and down 
the forest ways before he finds it, so unobtrusive 
in its breath of subtlest, rarest fragrance that it 
hardly seems to have a scent at all, so evasive in 
its hue that in one light its purity shows streaked 
with pink, in another light with violet — this gen- 
tle dream-thing showy ? The wind does not 
call it that, nor the hermit thrush. 

Ah, the hermit thrush ! He is the bird-spirit 
of the woods as the orchid is the flower-spirit ; 
he is the holy, high reserve of the shadows and 
the swaying boughs made manifest in sound. He 
is true to his sentiment. It is by no means al- 
ways vouchsafed the wanderer and listener — even 
in humblest frame of mind — to hear him sing. 
He has never failed to inhabit the woods which I 
frequent ; and one of the very first things which 
I do, on returning to the country in the spring, is 
[72] 



Wood Magic 



to climb and listen for him. But I am never sure 
of hearing him. I have waited on him whole af- 
ternoons and have not caught a note. He lurks 
and withdraws, he obeys his mood, brooding his 
music in that long silence out of which the best 
things come. I never see him ; I do not try. 
AVhen I find him singing, his music strikes some 
sixth sense first, stealing upon me from out the 
depths of the inner wood more like a touch than 
a sound. I hear nothing, and yet I stand potently 
arrested. Gradually then I take my way towards 
the spot from which the strange summons has 
come, and, out of the vibrating silence, at last the 
notes fall on my ear. Such ringing notes, so 
clear, so sweet, with meditated restraint of modu- 
lation and harmony, with unhurried sureness! 
Ah ! fine soul of twilight and dim ways, thou 
knowest the life of the forest well, thou art its 
priest. 

If one would find the woods most secretly, 
most mysteriously at home, one should go to them 
in the rain. I remember how startled I was when 
I made this discovery. It afforded me one of the 
great experiences of my country life. 

The occasion was on the third of a series of 
steadily rainy days. I had sat patiently in the 
house, reading and writing and watching the 
skies, waiting for the wind to change. But at 
last I could stand it no longer. On my last trip 
[73] 



The Edge of the Woods 

to the woods, nearly a week ago, I had found 
some orchid buds ; they must surely be open now. 
I could not lose their beauty. So I put on some 
old clothes, and started. No umbrella — perish 
the thought ! An umbrella in the woods ! 

As I climbed the hill, the rain paused for a mo- 
ment's rest, and a pale gleam of sunlight, falling 
behind low-hanging clouds, touched the distant 
mountain range into unearthly beauty. I climbed 
slowly, letting the wind blow damply fresh in my 
thirsty face. How good it was to be out again ! 
The trees and the bushes rejoiced in a wonderful 
vivid green ; there had been no hardship for them 
in the long cold rain. The brook ran shining be- 
side the path, the song -sparrow uttered his happy 
notes. The pastures were content. 

I drew near the wood entrance almost unaware, 
I was so occupied in observing the details of the 
hillside. But suddenly a breath touched my face, 
and a cool fragrance saluted me ; I looked up, and 
there I stood by the bars, with the gloomy green 
wall of the forest looming before me. 

I can hardly say what it was that I saw when I 
stepped over the wood's threshold. Indeed, I 
cannot say at all ; the experience was one of 
those revelations 

''such as dodge 
CoDception to the very bourn of heaven, 
Then leave the naked brain. '^ 
[74] 



Wood Magic 



But I knew at once that I stood in the presence 
of something which I had never known before, or 
had never known so near ; and all thought 
dropped from me as I waited breathless. 

They were solemnly beautiful, those woods, 
instinct with an awful meaning ; very dark and 
wet, yet flooded with a strange intense light, a 
sort of vivid gloom. They were utterly silent; 
not a stir of bird or squirrel was heard among 
the tall trunks of the trees. Only, far in among 
the shadows, sounded occasionally the weird 
whirling song of the veery. The brook came 
sliding down past my feet, uttering things of the 
gravest import which I could only just not under- 
stand. I had never had such a tingling sense of 
being on the verge of apprehending the mystery 
of the world. I stood aghast, expectant. 

Nothing more than that happened of course. 
Nothing more could happen unless one were dead. 
By and by I wandered slowly about, gathering 
mj'- orchids, pausing to listen and hold my breath, 
feeling dazed, bewildered. The woods were mute. 
Yet was their muteness most eloquent, closing the 
lips just over a song. 

The rain began again after a while, falling with 
a musical cadence on the high upper leaves. " Go 
home, child," the tolerant wood said to me. 
" Do you not know that this is not your hour ? " 

And indeed I think that I had transcended my 
[75] 



The Edge of the Woods 

mortal claim. Human beings should house them- 
selves during the storm, and leave the world to 
its mysteries, nor seek to pry and discover. Per- 
haps Pan had gathered all the gods into the 
woods on that rainy day, and I — oh, presumptu- 
ous ! oh, profane ! 

Yet not for all the lore of the ages would I 
part with that which I almost heard and almost 
saw. 



[T6] 



YII 
THE LADY OF THE GARDEN 

THE moonlight drifted down through the 
orchard, flooding the garden with dreamy 
radiance. It was a young moonlight, 
and its quality was misty and ethereal ; visions 
lurked in it. The deep grass of late June wove 
snares for it, and the silent, full-leaved trees bowed 
beneath its benediction, letting it interpenetrate 
them as closely as it would. All was silent. The 
hills beyond the garden and the orchard stood in 
a dim blue multitude against the soft night sky ; 
the valley held its peace. 

In and out among her flowers the Lady of the 
Garden moved on light spirit feet. She had died 
six months ago, and this was, therefore, her first 
summer of free ministry. When she was living, 
she had loved her garden with the peculiar tender- 
ness of those who have grown old at the cost of 
many a cherished occupation and interest, and 
who have found a last outlet for unflagging 
vitality. Nay, it was more than that ; that sounds 
selfish. Hers was a nature that must give itself 
in some fostering love and care. The garden had 
responded as gardens have such exquisite means 
of responding — in bloom and perfume, color and 
[77] 



The Edge of the Woods 

grace; it was a notable feature of the summer 
valley. The orchard behind it, the old white 
house set in its midst, even the meadows and 
mountains were the fairer for its presence. The 
birds and the butterflies loved it, the light lent it 
the witchery of its treatment all day long and 
sometimes all night. It was a personality ; no 
common, typical garden at all, but a gentle 
creature, alive and following its own peculiar des-^ 
tiny under its natal star. It would have seemed 
the Lady's last child, if she had not rather desired 
of it a last sisterhood. The two understood each 
other well, and lived constantly together. 

Hard work ? Yes, of course it meant that. 
That was part of its excellence in the beginning, 
for the Lady had always been one who had 
gloried in taking resolute hold upon life. But the 
years bring manacles to the most eager hands and 
feet; and, during the last season or two, there 
had been a deepening shadow in the creeping ad- 
mission that, by and by, experiment would have 
to be abandoned, even committed enterprise 
would have to be called in and dismissed. Fortu- 
nately, the Lady had never faced and accepted 
either of these two dreary conditions; she had 
dug a new bed and planted new flowers one month 
before she died. Her hope for the next spring 
was higher than ever. Well, it was justifled. 

In the first wonder of her liberation, she forgot 
[78] 



The Lady of the Garden 

all about the garden, pretty much all about the 
earth. That was natural; death is always so 
much more engrossiugly interesting than any one 
quite thinks it can be. There was everything to 
occupy her : love, understanding, knowledge, old 
mysteries rent asunder to show still more alluring 
mysteries behind them, surprise, revelation, 
ecstasy ; such an unveiling of Divinity as no most 
breathless, reverent human word can presume to 
adumbrate. One has to speak of it all in abstrac- 
tions ; but to the Lady it was a distinct, vivid 
experience. Her love — oh ! her dear love — re- 
covered again after all these years ! 

Meantime, the garden slept in earth's winter, 
and all was well with it. 

It is good to think that earth's children are 
loyal, true to the mother who brought them forth 
and nourished them on her bosom and gathered 
the mortal part of them back in a last healing 
embrace. Set free of the universe, they are not 
forever forgetful of green hills and valleys and 
garden plots. With the first stirrings of spring 
the Lady stood in her garden again. 

She had never been there so early before. The 
snow still lay deep on the beds, and the ground 
was hard with frost. But the wind blew softly ; 
there was a hint and a promise in it, a touch of 
reconciliation. The Lady felt it as she had never 
felt wind before — not outwardly with any senses, 
[79] 



The Edge of the Woods 

but inwardly, through and through, as if she and 
the air were one. There was power in the ex 
perience ; it touched her with a suggestion ; she 
breathed on the root of her favorite larkspur, and, 
sure enough, life stirred in it ; she had given her 
dear flower its first summons to the joy of an- 
other year. 

It was some time before she fully realized the 
extent of her new influence in her garden. The 
knowledge dawned on her little by little, in the 
delicious gradual manner of all deep understand- 
ings. She hardly knew what miracles she was 
working (miracles from her old point of view) 
until she had coaxed the shoots out of the ground, 
unfurled the little leaves, set the stems straight. 
Then sometimes she paused and said, " How did 
I do that ? Surely, I never did it before. Yet 
it seemed very natural." The most amazing facil- 
ity was that of color — oh, wonderful to determine 
the hue of a pansy ! The little pansy buds set 
themselves, swelled and grew, and began to turn 
back at the edges ; and the Lady hung over them 
in her old manner, watching, wondering what 
color they were going to be. Suddenly, she 
knew ; she entered into the folded heart of the 
blossom before her and found it all purple and 
gold; the fragrance was as her own thought. 
So was the color ; and, that being so, she could 
control it. With a touch of her fancy she 
[80] 



The Lady of the Garden 

dimmed the purple, blew a fine dust of medita- 
tion across the gleaming gold ; and that pansy 
came forth a pensive, instead of a buoyant, thing. 

The secret of color ! Most spiritual, most mys- 
terious of earth's manifestations, it seems rather 
a manifestation of heaven, hovering, vanishing, 
persisting in every nook and corner of earth. In- 
tangible, evanescent, it lifts the sense which per- 
ceives it to the dignity of the imagination. We 
ought none of us really to need to die in order to 
find heaven. However, it is perhaps well that 
we do ; for revelation is an inestimable boon. 

People wondered at the beauty of the garden 
that year. .The winter had been a hard one ; 
many neighboring gardens had suffered a heavy 
loss. Moreover, the old white house remained 
closed all through the spring, and no loving 
hands came to take the place of those that now 
lay folded far away in a green cemetery. There 
was a drought, there were high winds ; but the 
garden blossomed safely. Ah, excellent delight, 
to cast oneself adown the current of a streaming 
wind, and, blowing with it, in it, see that it 
wrought no harm to the flowers that one loved 
so well ! Ah, tender joy, to bring the moisture 
of hidden springs to feed the roots in the thirsty 
ground ! The Lady of the Garden, never having 
known such service, had never known such full 
contentment as was hers this summer. 
[81] 



The Edge of the Woods 

How about those folded hands in that green 
spot far away ? Did the Lady ever think of 
them? Hardly ever. Why should she? She 
was gladly quit of them, a great deal better off 
without them ; they meant nothing to her now, 
save an occasional reminiscence which always 
made her sigh. She intended to forget her grave 
as soon as she could. But the Lady's friends and 
children, still on the hither side of death, were 
not so brave and strong in spirit as to forget. 

Perhaps it is not well to blame them ; perhaps, 
indeed, they might be blamed if they could quite 
forget. Love clings to form and substance, priz- 
ing the spirit always more, but cherishing the 
instrument through which the song has run. It 
was a strange, an awful void which the dear 
Lady's disappearance had left in the world. 

That was the reason why the house in the 
midst of the garden stood so long unoccupied. 
The void was at its keenest there, and those who 
loved the Lady shrank from facing it. Silence, 
emptiness, no answer — those are dread conditions 
when one has never failed of comradeship and a 
swift reply. 

The Lady knew this. She was sorry. In her 
long earthly life she had faced too many voids 
and suffered too intensely through them, ever to 
forget their bitterness. But knowledge, though 
it may pity ignorance, can never realize again the 
[82] 



The Lady of the Garden 

full pang of its doubt. The Lady wondered at 
the tears of those who mourned her, just as, look- 
ing back, she wondered at her own earthly tears. 
" How can they ? But then, indeed, how could 
I? And yet I did." She would have tried to 
comfort them if they had left a path open for her 
feet ; but quietness is the name of the road along 
which spirits must travel to touch one another, and 
grief is noisy. The Lady could not find her way 
through the tortured, bewildered labyrinth that 
involved and surrounded the hearts of her chil- 
dren ; therefore she gave up the effort and turned 
her attention to the garden : that was quiet enough. 
After all, what did it matter? Grief, at the 
longest, lasts but a day ; comfort and knowledge 
come surely to all, even if they have to wait out 
the rest of their lives to experience it. Meantime, 
grief has its own beneficent office ; it humbles and 
softens. God, at least, keeps His own way open 
through all labjrrinths. 

When the old white house was at last occupied, 
the Lady had hopes of a sweet adjustment. Surely 
the silence and peace of the valley, surely the 
strength of the surrounding hills, surely the very 
associations of the old happy days would give 
comfort. As for the garden — could any one look 
on that full thriving beauty of color and form, 
that lusty, luxuriant growth, and not know that 
the Lady herself had been there, caring for the 
[83] 



The Edge of the Woods 

last darling of her earthly life as nobody else 
could care ? 

Ah ! it was beautiful, that garden, in the young 
summer moonlight. The "globed peonies " opened 
their hearts, deep red and pure white and seashell 
pink, heavily fragrant ; the tall larkspur lifted its 
spires against the orchard's grassy hill ; the sweet- 
william stood in straight pungent rows; the 
dame's rocket scattered sweetness from its thickly 
starred branches. Foxgloves crowded one corner, 
erect and delicately separate for all their close 
association ; pinks ran riot along the edge of the 
grass ; a few late irises held splendid heads upright 
on long stalks. 

The Lady loved her white peony dearly — great 
snowy blossoms with petals that were like the plu- 
mage of a bird, a wounded bird, streaked with 
crimson at the heart ; she loved her trailing rose ; 
she doted on her larkspur. But better than any- 
thing else in the garden she loved two plants of pink 
lady's-slipper that had been brought to her from 
the woods several years ago. With great care she 
had set them out, in shady places underneath the 
foliage of other plants ; and she had watered and 
tended them with peculiar vigilance. 'Now, this 
spring, she had devoted to them the best services 
of her new powers, entering into their secret life 
with an exquisite pleasure that, in the old order 
of things, would have verged on pain. With 
[84] 



The Lady of the Garden 

them she had stirred underneath the ground, 
awaking to the new season ; with them she had 
crept up to light and air; with them she had 
grown and put forth leaves and gloried in green- 
ness. Finally, with them she had set the buds of 
the beautiful quaint flowers and had dreamed the 
gradual color into them — faint streaks and brush- 
ings of delicate pink, deepening as the blossom 
expanded and unfurled. To know the color of 
the lady's-slipper was the most thrilling delight of 
this eventful spring. 

One flower on each plant had come to perfection 
and hung, full-orbed, in the moonlight of the 
summer evening. The Lady could not keep away 
from them. In her old earthly fashion, she went 
the rounds of the garden again and again, linger- 
ing here and there, no longer to pull up a weed or 
pick off a dead leaf, but to touch with the dew 
and steal with the wind and quicken with the 
magnetic forces of the earth and air. But oftener 
than to any other spot, she returned to the shadows 
where the lady's-slippers lurked and dimly 
gleamed. Once she took a shaft of moonlight 
and sent it straight through the leaves of the 
larkspur to fall softly, caressingly, on the bent 
head of her dearest blossom. Again, she gathered 
the dew in her hands and bathed the broad green 
leaves. Constantly, she hung breathless, watch- 
ing, loving, delighting — oh ! who could have 
[85] 



The Edge of the Woods 

thought a garden would mean so much more 
when one was dead than when one was alive ? 

On the steps of the broad piazza looking out into 
the garden, the Lady's children sat, very sad and 
silent. Their silence was good as far as it went, 
but it came from the outside and did not penetrate 
deeply enough to affect their hearts. Those 
foolish organs were loud with grief. " No use," 
the Lady thought, shaking her head and smiling 
a little, but pityingly. " I can't touch them yet ; 
I must bide my time." She had forgotten that in 
a few days her earthly birthday was coming, and 
that her children were therefore sadder and lonelier 
than ever. Earthly birthdays ! How should she 
remember ? Her whole human experience seemed 
remote and unreal. The birthday of her death 
was the only event that counted, if one must still 
take note of time in eternity. Therefore, absorbed 
and happy, she went on her way through the 
garden ; she breathed a caress on the lady's- 
slipper, she turned and blessed her poor blind 
children, and vanished in the boundless blue that 
was now her familiar home. 

Earth habits cling, however, especially when 
one is newly dead; and time's rhythm still beats 
faintly in the memories of those who have just 
escaped from it. '^ Ah, my birthday ! " The 
Lady remembered the day when it dawned far 
below her, and once more she paused and turned, 
[86] 



The Lady of the Garden 

with the old need of mortal things upon her. 
Her garden — of course, that was the spot for her 
to visit to-day ; she wanted her flowers' congratu- 
lation, the welcome of her larkspur, the shy wishes 
of her lady's-slipper. For wishes are just as 
precious in heaven as they are on earth, and a 
good deal more potent. Perhaps her children 
would welcome her, too, on this day that had 
always been the day of days to them. With a 
sweet rush of gladness, the Lady entered her wait- 
ing garden on the wings of the summer breeze. 

But what was the matter ? Before she crossed 
the green-shadowed lawn at the foot of the or- 
chard, she knew that something was wrong. 
Something ? A great deal. It was as if, instead 
of a dear face turned towards her, she had found a 
back obstinately presented. Her garden was not 
watching for her with its larkspur and peonies. 
Even in heaven, one feels disappointments ; they 
are part of the nature of things to a soul that 
eternally hopes and desires. One feels perplexity, 
too ; the Lady could not understand what had 
happened. She had left larkspur and peonies in 
full bloom, with many buds waiting to open ; she 
had fully expected a wonderful welcome of color 
and fragrance to-day. In the keenness of her new 
powers, she was prepared for the best birthday 
celebration she had ever had. But where were 
the flowers ? Gone. Only the green, hard little 
[87] 



The Edge of the Woods 

buds left — no hope from them for many days to 
come ; only the bare spaces where single blossoms 
had stood in their rarity. Had there been a 
tempest whose warning had not reached her in 
her far pursuit of unimaginable new occupations 
and ecstasies ? l^o ; the long grass in the orchard 
was not ruffled, the trees had lost none of their 
leaves. Had there been robbery ? The Lady 
glanced at the old white house, and, lo ! it was 
empty again — not closed, but unoccupied. 

Intuitions come more swiftly to spirits when 
free from their bodies than when clogged by 
sensation ; and the Lady had always been one to 
leap to sure conclusions. She knew in a minute, 
now, what had happened. Her sorrowing, loving 
children had picked every flower in her precious 
garden and had carried them all away to lay them 
on her grave. All of them ? Even the lady's- 
slipper ? The poor Lady sped to the shady corner, 

and there, sure enough ! But she could not 

endure it ; she sat down and wept. 

It was a forlorn birthday celebration. De- 
serted by her children and flowers, bereft, disap- 
pointed, there was nothing for it but that she 
should turn her attention to that distant spot of 
earth which was being made the centre of the 
day's commemoration. She did not want to go 
there at all — the very thought was distasteful to 
her — but wistful loneliness drew her. 
[88] 



The Lady of the Garden 

Alas ! she bent over her grave, dismayed at the 
sight of her flowers laid low in the grass — as low 
and faint and frail as she in that dim hour of her 
death which she vaguely remembered. The roses 
had lost their petals, the peonies were limp and 
crumpled, the foxgloves were scattered ; across 
the head of the grave, in front of the shining new 
stone, lay the two pink lady's-slippers, shrunken 
and bruised. 

" My flowers ! my flowers ! " 

It is not a scene on which one can bear to 
linger. While it endured, not even the raptures' 
of heaven availed to lighten the burden of baffled 
love and grievous disappointment. 

There is not really much to be said in excuse 
for that dear Lady's children ; nor, indeed, in ex- 
cuse for the whole cloud of mortal blindness. The 
ages have done their best to open our eyes. A 
Holiest Person came long ago expressly to teach 
us the lesson which gardens and seasons have 
illustrated, sages and our own hearts have repeated 
constantly ever since. Death has nothing to do 
with graves, anniversaries are no affair of the 
spirit. Life renews itself at every turn, and feeds 
on living memories and eternal expectations. But 
we seem to have made up our minds that we will 
not understand. 



[89] 



Yin 

THE CHURCH AND THE MOUNTAIN 

THERE is no doubt about it that mysticism 
is the only philosophy. 
Of course all the others are true too, 
and there are probably none too many of them to 
preserve the balance of the many-sided world. If 
one wholly commits himself to a statement like 
that above, one finds himself confronted with the 
challenge : " So you believe that the business of 
life is to escape from the illusion of individuality 
and to merge your troublesome runaway soul as 
quickly as possible in the All-One, the AU-IS'oth- 
ing ? " But why must philosophy bind itself into 
a logical system ? Why is it not generously con- 
tent to remain a tendency ? Being a thing which 
devotes itself to the needs of the human spirit, it 
ought to leave plenty of scope for moods and oc- 
casions; so that if I abandon my soul to-day — 
finding it uncommonly troublesome, perhaps — I 
shall be perfectly free to reclaim it to-morrow and 
give it another trial. 

I modify my initial statement. All the philos- 
ophies are good, but mysticism is the best of 
them. 

Ah, that business of losing the soul— how sorry 
[90] 



The Church and the Mountain 

one is for those who have never known it ! One 
can seldom predict the experience. It does not 
come very often at best, and it has a royal way — 
which becomes it — of choosing its own occasions. 
Describe it ? One cannot. It is as the lapse of 
the river into the sea, as the merging of spirits on 
lovers' lips, as the breathless hush when wind 
folds into wind and the night broods close, as the 
withdrawal of the morning star into the dawn. 
Yet it is more than all these things ; it is — very 
God of very God. When it is over, one stands 
transfixed, intensely serious, yet serenely light- 
hearted too ; exhausted, yet wonderfully re- 
freshed ; purged, exalted ; and quiet — that is the 
best gift of the experience, its gift of peace. A 
very profundity of repose holds the spirit that has 
submitted to a mystic embrace. 

Explain it ? How can one, if even description 
has to go halting by synonyms and comparisons ? 
Perhaps the soul is an emanation from God and is 
gathered wholly back into Him when the rapture 
falls. Perhaps our boasted individuality is really 
as much of an illusion as the early, thoroughgo- 
ing mystics consistently maintained. Perhaps — 
but who knows, and what does it matter ? The 
experience itself is the thing ; and one who has 
known that perceives that the function of under- 
standing is not so essential to the life of the spirit 
as is sometimes supposed. 

[91] 



The Edge of the Woods 

I have said that one can seldom predict a mys- 
tic experience. That is true ; the high summons 
may come anywhere, at any time. But there are 
certain places that are more liable than others to 
divine visitations ; and the wise mystic searches 
these out and zealously frequents them. Every 
one for himself in this matter. Although mysti- 
cism is anything but an individualistic faith, its 
manifestations are purely particular ; and its chil- 
dren have to study their own peculiar environ- 
ments to learn where, for them, Jacob's ladder 
rests. 

In my experience, there are two places — ^widely 
sundered and utterly diverse — which can above 
others be trusted to catch and detain the skirts of 
Divinity. 

One is a mountain. It is not so very much of a 
mountain — not so very high, I mean — and, viewed 
with strictly impartial eyes (if any one in the 
world is so unlucky as to have optics like that) it 
is certainly no more beautiful than a hundred 
other hills. Its prosaic name is Green Peak. I 
like it immensely for that. The designation is so 
unassuming and genuine ; so fine, too, and clever, 
masking high heaven in the guise of the com- 
monplace. As if a seraph should rest content to 
bear the name John Jones. It is just a hill like 
all other hills ; — but, ah ! it has ways with it. 

Sometimes it wakes me in the early dawn. 
[92] 



The Church and the Mountain 

That is inconvenient, for I hate to get up. But 1 
have to do it, thrusting my feet into my slippers, 
wrapping a long cloak about me, stealing down 
through the silent house, mysterious, shadowy, 
unreal, not my familiar home at all, but an en- 
chanted dwelling. The pictures and tables make 
significant signs as I pass ; I catch them from the 
tail of my eye. Slowly, softly, I open the door 
and step out into the glimmering dawn ; the cool 

air breathes in my face, and the silence ! Why 

is it that even the quietest house is full of obscure 
disturbance compared with the wide peace of the 
outdoors ? I sit down on the door-step, and look 
across the valley at Green Peak. It stands very 
dark and high, outlined against the faint glory 
which is just beginning to quicken in the sky be- 
hind it, with one great white star above its head 
and a white band of mist folded across its breast. 
Other mists out of the valley are creeping softly 
about its feet and climbing its dark sides. It is a 
shepherd — no, a priest. But are they not the 
same thing ? It is sublimely august and gentle, 
presiding over the dawn. 

I gaze at it and I cannot breathe softly enough 
in my adoration. The meadows worship with 
me ; they are mute, all gray and silver with dusk 
and the dew. The tall trees worship ; no murmur 
runs through their hushed branches. The very 
grass prostrates itself still lo\\rer in its dear humil- 
[93] 



The Edge of the Woods 

ity, and waits ; we all wait — for what ? There 
comes an instant when, thought and sense sus- 
pended (or else exerted — I really do not know 
which) to the uttermost, self -consciousness entirely 
eclipsed, the trees and the grass and the meadows 
and I are caught up together with the white mists 
to the dark breast of the mountain, and there are 
held close in an embrace which fuses our separate 
beings and makes us one even with the morning 
star. After this, I go soberly back to bed ; and 
when the quarry whistle wakes me again at seven 
o'clock in the usual manner and I sit up and re- 
member, I seem to have had an experience beyond 
the world, in the ideal realm which the objects of 
sense only symbolize. 

So much for the morning. Green Peak's mid- 
day mood is for the most part a practical one. 
The sensible mountain understands that the work 
of the world must be done, and that its children 
must be left undistracted to do it. Therefore, it 
stands out quite clearly, with cloud-shadows rac- 
ing over it, with breezes saluting it, with a blue 
sky irradiating it. There is as little of mystery 
about it as may be. Nevertheless, it sometimes 
torments me, will not entirely let me alone; and 
I often have to shut myself quite away from it if 
I expect to concentrate my mind on anything else. 
At almost any hour of the day it has lurking sug- 
gestions of magic iu its lines and hollows. 
[94] 



The Church and the Mountain 

Then when evening comes ! If I had to 

choose its superlative moment of revelation, I 
should hesitate between the dawn and a certain 
sunset that occurs two or three times in a season. 
The conditions of the latter are known to me 
now, and I can watch for it ; though of course I 
am quite as likely to be disappointed as gratified 
in my expectation. For mere conditions do not 
secure revelation. As a matter of fact, the thing 
seems to mean most when it comes as a surprise, 
when I have quite forgotten about it, have failed 
to recognize the possibilities of the sky, and am 
merely roaming about the garden, thinking that 
here is a dull day over — better luck to-morrow. 
For, in accordance with one of the most beautiful 
laws of the world, it is always a dull day that 
works the spell. From morning to night a gray 
heaven of cloud, brooding above the tops of the 
mountains, not very low, but close, unrelenting. 
No wind, as a rule — a silent day, heavy and 
forlorn. Such a day is depressing; one aches 
with the burden of nameless troubles. Then, 
just when it seems to be over, when the sun has 
withdrawn his unseen presence behind the western 
hill and there is no longer any hope of a glimpse 
of his genial countenance, then the miracle hap- 
pens. A touch, a warning, — I know that the 
hills send forth a summons when they feel the 
glory coming, for I have often been called from 
[95] 



The Edge of the Woods 

the supper table, from the depths of the barn or 
the library, by a sudden, unreasoned necessity to 
go and look at Green Peak. And there — oh, 
wonderful ! how shall one paint such a transfigu- 
ration? The clouds have parted somewhere in 
the north, below the line of the hills, and the 
light of the sunken sun streams back in a long, 
level finger across the breast and summit of the 
whole eastern range. The feet of these moun- 
tains stand plunged in shadow — the gray night 
has met the gray day there — but their crests soar 
into a sudden glory which dazzles and confounds 
the sight; one cannot believe it. Eadiant, shin- 
ing, glowing, intense, they lift up their heads, 
like flaming archangels, against the gray sky, and 
the King of Glory comes in. 

There is simply no sort of comment to make on 
a sight like that. 

Green Peak is very noble in storms. It wears 
the clouds grandly, and lets them wreathe and 
stream about it as they will, shutting it away alto- 
gether, or giving dark glimpses of its crest to 
watchful valley eyes. It is terribly austere thus 
at times ; but that is all right — priests have to be 
austere now and then. 

One evening I came home across the meadows, 

late, in the final hush of a storm that had spent 

itself at sunset time. It w^as quite late, there 

was very little light left, and it was all embodied 

[96] 



The Church and the Mountain 

in a white mist which filled the whole valley. A 
veritable sea of mist ; 1 swam in it, I could not 
see or breathe or feel anything else. There were 
no mountains, there was no sky, there was hardly 
a path under my feet. One's very thoughts 
become muffled in a mist like that. I was plod- 
ding along, blindly, stupidly, not enjoying myself 
very much (this kind of mystery is too oppress- 
ive), when a faint stir, the merest soft breathing of 
air, made me look up, and there above me loomed 
the crest of my mountain, gigantic. Only the 
crest ; its sides were still lost in utter vagueness 
and nothingness. I forgot that it had any sides, 
and its crest astonished me as something unfa- 
miliar, a new peak in Darien. Yet it was Green 
Peak, beyond any doubt. Out of its fathomless 
realm of white cloud, it leaned over me and 
sternly admonished me — how it impended, how it 
imposed ! I stood perfectly still, and again the 
releasing touch came upon me, and in that white 
oblivion Green Peak and I were once more made 
one with each other and with the universe. 

Green Peak's twin sister in magic is not a 
mountain, or any shape of the open country. It 
is a church in a city, many miles away. A very 
beautiful church ; yet here again one has to know 
it to love it. It occupies a commanding position, 
in a triangle, at the junction of several streets. 
[97] 



The Edge of the Woods 

But it holds this position so modestly, with such 
an unassuming grace, that one does not realize 
what a power it wields until it is too late. Too 
late to escape, I mean, of course — if one happens 
to want to escape. For myself, 1 think that the 
rogue has bewitched me, the rascal has given me 
medicines to make me love it. 

1 do not " belong " to it in the least ; it does 
not represent my native denomination. But I 
went in there one day in some stress of spirit, and 
all was over with me. I have forgotten now 
what was the matter ; I only know that I was 
tired and vexed, and that the church presented 
itself, and that I went in. I crossed the street 
with a dash in front of a trolley car ; I mounted 
the steps with a little run; I opened the outer 
door with a brisk pull, entered the vestibule, 
paused, hesitated, looked up to see who had 
spoken to me, opened the inner door slowly, and 
went in and stood still. 

There was nobody there. It was late after- 
noon, and parts of the church were already in 
soft shadow. On either side of the nave the 
columns soared into obscurity, and far down 
behind the rood screen the chancel lay dim with 
dusk. But the low sun had found a last way for 
itself through a corner of one of the windows 
and was stealing along the opposite wall, touching 
here a column and there an arch, resting upon 
[98] 



The Church and the Mountain 

the carved pulpit and bringing a saint or an 
angel into a sudden brief prominence. Just like 
the late sunlight on Green Peak. Precisely. The 
analogy struck me, and I sat down in one of the 
chairs with a sense of home-coming. 

It was very still. The vastness of this interior 
removed it from the ordinary class of " indoors," 
and allowed it a range of silence which houses do 
not know. But it was articulate nevertheless, 
instinct with a thrilling communication which the 
spirit understood. Those who had built it had 
loved their work. That was apparent not only in 
the compelling impression of the whole, but also 
in the fine perfection of the details — in the grace 
of the carving, in the dignity of the statues. 
There was everywhere the touch of a thoughtful, 
discriminating devotion, working to produce one 
effect through a multitude of means. Love to 
love always. As those who had built had wrought 
with their hearts in their fingers, so those who 
inhabited were moved with tenderness and awe. 
I was sure of this as I sat there alone. In the 
empty chairs and in the shadowy, vacant aisles, 
I felt the presence of an adoring host of 
other worshippers. Their unseen occupation was 
strangely moving to me. 

It was all strange. It is hard to explain what 
the church did to me that afternoon to make me 
its slave. It appeared to do nothing at all. There 
[99] 



The Edge of the Woods 

was even a certain aloofness about it, as if it were 
wholly absorbed in a transcendent mood of con- 
templation. Yet there was an awareness too, an 
attention which took note of every sigh, every 
glance, every hesitating thought. A curious, con- 
tradictory mixture of response and ignoring, of 
utter remoteness and intimate presence. The 
church let me completely alone ; yet I had never 
been so enveloped, so permeated. 

The spirit of places and buildings is one of the 
most mysterious forces we have to reckon with. 
How can it happen that an inanimate edifice, a 
mere construction of timber and stone, achieves a 
distinct personality, even a soul of its own? 
Matter in its crudest form is here — undeniable, 
heavy, opaque — yet it strikes out a result of pure 
spirit, intangible and thrilling. 

There was no doubt about this church's soul. 
Soul is an attribute that one knows when one sees 
it. A lofty soul, invested with grandeur (like 
Green Peak in that respect), but so gracious as to 
be almost humble in its response to the faintest 
tug of a human need. It listened through all its 
rapt spaces that day to the beating of one heart. 
A wise soul, moreover. The ages behind the 
prayers and the litanies which were said in the 
place every day lent it a weight of intelligence 
which was very comforting. One felt sure that it 
would understand every peculiar crisis. Yet not 
[100] 



The Church and the Mountain 

too tolerantly ; underneath its beauty there was a 
certain austerity, an inflexible purpose which for- 
bade many things. It was probably capable of 
coldness and severity. A serene soul — oh, pro- 
foundly untroubled ! That was its most significant 
trait. For if all the sins and the sorrows of life 
had been poured out in it, if it knew the very 
worst of mankind, and could still maintain its 
high peace, then human affairs could not after all 
be in such a desperate strait. A scourged criminal 
might go out from that presence, bleeding, but 
with a shining face. 

Do we often enough stop to think what a 
beautiful thing our religion is ? We are so used 
to it ; or, alas ! so unfamiliar with it. For of 
course, as a mournful matter of fact, our present 
civilization reflects it hardly at all. But we profess 
it, and it stands patiently waiting for us to see 
our way clear to live up to it. Meantime, if we 
consider it fairly, we find it a most exquisite prod- 
uct, a work of the trinity of God and Man and 
Brother Time. There is probably no offense in 
saying that man has improved and developed it 
much. That is the way of things in the world. 
A divine seed, a human garden ; a divine idea, a 
human poem or symphony. Humanity is not 
simple enough, is not consistent, is too diverse, to 
follow the Christ idea nakedly. It has other needs 
in its manifold nature : sensuous, passionate long- 
[101] 



The Edge of the Woods 

ings which crave for adornment and ceremony, 
pomp and symbolism ; docile and timid necessities 
which must have the safeguard of law and order. 
It had to take the teachings of Jesus and fashion 
them into a system. The reed with its one high 
note of unworldliness has become the organ with 
many stops and many cadences. Nor has it lost 
the unworldliness thus. The theme remains the 
same through all developments. 

I thought of these things during the first part 
of my twilight sojourn in the silent church. But 
by and by I stopped thinking. The reluctant 
sunlight withdrew, the shadows deepened and 
settled, even the silence grew more profound. I 
sank on my knees. I waited. My soul lay, an 
offering, on the white altar, hidden in the dusk. 
When it was accepted, my life escaped, and I was 
folded into the church as completely as one of its 
shadows. 

This was already an experience beyond the 
scope of Green Peak. It had no more divinity in 
it, perhaps (Green Peak is divine enough) ; but it 
had humanity, and Green Peak is rather " careless 
of mankind." Having humanity, it had all the 
rich complexity of emotion which pertains to the 
intricate working of human affairs ; and it moved 
me, if more disturbingly, yet more profoundly, 
than the lonely hill. I went out into the evening 
city, hushed and exalted ; nor did I hear the 
[102] 



The Church and the Mountain 

church say behind me as I closed the door, " Yet 
show I unto you a more excellent way." 

The next morning the enamored sunlight and 
I returned in good time ; and there was the 
humanity too, hurrying to embody the spirit 
which it had left to fill the church so potently in 
its absence. Humanity ? I should say so ! It 
came flocking along the many streets which con- 
verged so significantly at this point, trooped in 
through the doors, paused, subsided, and took its 
way soberly up the aisles. It was a humanity 
versed in genuflexion beyond a Puritan under- 
standing ; but what did that matter ? The church 
reassured me, or rather compelled me, with its 
imperious gentleness ; and I reentered my nook 
of the evening before and knelt down with my 
kind. I supposed that they were still my kind in 
spite of their superior proficiency in gesture. 

Yerily, they were, and I was theirs, and we 
were all one another's. We could not help it in 
the tide of the mighty service which presently 
rolled through the church, sweeping us all 
together in one burst of praise and prayer. Mar- 
vellous service ! It was as the voice of the 
church itself, waking at last from its contempla- 
tion and turning to tell us what it had learned. 
There was the ring of eternity in it. But there 
was also the pulse of time and the human accent 
which marked it the voice of the people as well 
[103] 



The Edge of the Woods 

as of the church. There could hardly have been 
a heart there that did not find its special need 
expressed in some prayer first or last ; and that is 
saying a good deal, for an assembly of several 
hundred modern hearts presents — or conceals — a 
lavish variety of complex necessities. Yet the 
prayers gave no effect of separation, of passing 
from point to point. They all took their flight 
from a common ground to a common heaven. 
Such a service is perhaps the best example there 
is in the world of the place of the many in the 
one, of the life of the one as made up of the many 
and yet as greater than the sum of them. What 
is It, by the wslj, that makes everything that is 
worth while greater than the sum of all its parts ? 
The church's morning mood was triumphant. 
The stained glass windows glowed in the sun, the 
arches rose clear of mystery, and even the altar 
offered its white beauty generously to the rever- 
ent gaze of the throng. The organ pealed and 
the choir exulted ; silence was put to flight. The 
place was no less compelling thus than it had 
been the evening before. Eather, I found it 
more compelling, for there was now so much 
more of me to be compelled : there was the 
woman across the aisle, the little boy in the next 
row but one, the young girl in front of him. It 
is curious how the spirit runs out and identifies 
itself with certain people in a congregation or 
[104] 



The Church and the Mountain 

audience, claiming them in their unconsciousness, 
sharing with them a secret congratulation which 
they never suspect. The experience is a happy 
one. But it is nothing compared to what hap- 
pened to that whole churchful of people when, at 
the most solemn point in the service, they all 
knelt together and suddenly — not a barrier of any 
kind remained, not a sundering distinction in the 
whole throng ; but every life flowed into the 
other, and all flowed into the One Life and were 
hushed in an ineffable peace. 

This was the " better way," this was the crest 
of mystic experience. For it is more to have 
been several hundred people than to have been a 
mountain or even a morning star. 

What does it all mean anyway — this spell of 
the church and the mountain ? Nothing new, 
surely. The spirit world has always been knock- 
ing at our doors, pleading, commanding, now and 
then thrusting its glories upon us in a desperate 
sally which ought to make an end of resistance. 
What is the matter, then? Are we perverse, 
that we so seldom and so fleetingly embrace the 
morning star ? Do we not even yet understand 
the meaning of life that we so rarely love one 
another? Or are we really helpless, bound in 
chains which we cannot break, unable to live the 
life of the spirit save in little snatches ? 
[ 105 ] 



The Edge of the Woods 

The snatches are something, at any rate ; in 
fact they are everything. They indicate native 
talent and ultimate achievement. That which we 
have known we can know again, and again and 
again ; and perhaps by and by permanently. 
Meantime, the church and the mountain stand fast 
and hold the keys for us. We can hardly revere 
them too much, wait upon them too patiently, ex- 
pect too much of them. 

Every man his own mountain and church. But 
when he has found them, let him cling to them. 



[106] 



IX 
SPRINGS OF LIFE 

MULTITUDINOLTS as are the human 
lives which flow upon the earth, the 
hills of the Lord are infinite, and each 
little existence finds its source in a secret, peculiar 
spring. Much of the trouble, the strain and rest- 
lessness on every hand, comes from a failure to 
keep a path open back to this spring. 

The neglect is easy enough, and happens for the 
most part in very virtuous ways. Such a one is 
working hard for his fellows ; how can he possi- 
bly drop his tasks and run away by himself ? 
Such another is much more admiringly intent on 
his neighbor's stream than on his own. For, as we 
all travel down the widening world valley, we en- 
counter many hundreds of streams, and some of 
them are quite obviously deeper and finer than 
others. Would it not be more modest in us, as 
well as more prudent and sensible, when the need 
for primal refreshment comes, to follow the big- 
gest streams back to their springs rather than 
to go ever tracing and retracing our own familiar 
windings ? 

But, as a matter of fact, there are no paths for 
us to other men's springs ; the Wisdom which has 
created us has seen to that interdiction. We may 
[107] 



The Edge of the Woods 

drink of the rivers of all the world, and thank 
God for the privilege ; but only of one spring, our 
own. 

It is interesting to try to guess, from the eyes 
of the various people one meets, which of them 
have kept the path open, which have neglected it, 
which, alas ! have lost it utterly. The telltale 
expressions range all the way from a clear shining 
of peace and humor to a haunting, tragic restless- 
ness or, worse, a lethargy. There are not many 
natures who seem to follow the path every day. 
Yet there are some such people. I once stood be- 
side a woman whose notable kindness of heart 
brought her friends daily to lean upon her, a 
woman whose whole life seemed to be given over 
to others, and heard her instantly refuse a suffi- 
ciently simple office of philanthropy. 

" Why would you not do it ? " I ventured to 
ask when the baffled advocate had departed. 

My friend regarded me with her clear eyes, 
hesitated, then smiled and answered : 

^' Well, yes, I will tell you. I have found that 
I cannot do work like that ; it cuts me off from 
my springs." 

Of doing and doing there is no end, of plan- 
ning and hoping and striving ; but of simple be- 
ing there is not enough always to keep the mill- 
wheels in motion and bear the ships to the sea. 

In a world of diversity so surprising and so un- 
[ 108 ] 



Springs of Life 



failingly excellent as this motley globe (" motley's 
the only wear " ), it happens of course that the 
springs of life lie in all sorts of nooks and corners, 
strange and inexplicable enough to those who do 
not own them. What is this brother doing, per- 
versely setting his feet to\vards the flinty rock, and 
that comrade towards the desert ? Springs do not 
rise there ; they rise in the forest, green and cool 
and fragrant. Ah, but the truth of the matter is 
that springs rise everywhere. There are springs 
in the heart of the city and in the sandy plain. 
It is only essential that every man understand his 
own thirst. 

To the perfectly honest and simple-hearted such 
understanding is easy. They drink and remain 
unperplexed. But the timid and doubtful some- 
times refuse through humility to claim their own, 
and so the world loses them. Yes, it is even so 
bad as that : the world, which has need of them, 
loses them and suffers accordingly. It is sad 
enough that they should lose themselves ; but that 
the world and their fellow men should lose them 
is downright sin on their part. What sort of in- 
habitants and workers does the world demand, 
human lives of what quality? Faint and trick- 
ling, muddy and dull ? Away with them ! IS'o ; 
give her joyous lives, springing each day from the 
primal source, welling direct from the infinite, 
touched by the angel of peace. 
[109] 



The Edge of the Woods 

"We all have an inherent conviction that joy was 
meant for the children of men — joy and peace, 
here and now. Eternity will be no more begun 
when we are dead than it is at this moment ; why 
do we insist on postponing our eternal advan- 
tages ? The way to our joy and our peace is more 
simple than any trouble of which we complain, 
and lies close at hand : Only to be true to our- 
selves, to hark us back to our springs of life, and 
then to go bravely down through the world, do- 
ing our work well. The primal secret is our own, 
but we interpret it to the world in daily parable. 



[110] 



X 



THE JOYOUS COMPANY OF THE POS- 
SESSED 

I WOULD not go so far as to say that the 
Possessed are the only happy people in the 
world ; for happmess, thank God, is a broad 
and varied term. But I think that, beyond any 
doubt, they are the happiest people. 

Such concentric mortals I have in mind (though 
they are often called eccentric) as have the power 
of devoting themselves, soul and body, to one 
great end, who take the fruit of life in both hands 
and squeeze it into one cup. An artist, absorbed 
in his work, chasing hard after the vision ; a phi- 
lanthropist, on fire to serve ; a Nansen, a Savona- 
rola. 

Not everybody agrees with me in this theory. 
The wife of one of the very members of the Joy- 
ous Company said me nay on the subject a short 
time ago. An artist's wife. She and I had been 
cautiously glancing in through the open door of 
the studio ; not for anything would either of us 
have made a sound. 

" That," I said, as we turned away from the 
stimulating glimpse of keen, swift eyes and set 

[111] 



The Edge of the Woods 

forehead and mouth, " that seems to me the hap- 
piest kind of person in the world." 

" Well," the wife began doubtfully ; then she 
paused and shook her head. 

Of course I knew perfectly what she meant. 
Her definition of happiness called for serenity, 
satisfaction, repose; and such conditions do not 
accord with the artistic stress and exhaustion. 
But personally I am willing to allow strife, fever, 
disappointment, even failure, as elements of the 
live state which I call happiness. 

To be keenly awake and about one's business — 
that is the great thing ; to care mightily. To 
arise each day to the call of a purpose bigger than 
oneself, outside oneself, claiming one's uttermost 
effort. To fall into line, no matter how humbly, 
with the march of the great world's beauty and 
strength on the road to Righteousness. 

The poetry (and by that I mean the essential 
significance) of foreign missions lies in this fact of 
possession. It is inspiring that one should care 
so much about his Master and the great Idea 
which the Master represents that he simply has 
to tell all the world about it. Charity merely 
begins at home. A great Idea demands the 
whole world ; and there is about genuine enthu- 
siasm a certain divine impatience that cannot 
wait for slow processes. The disciple has only 
one earthly life, and it is all too fleeting. There- 
[ 112 ] 



The Joyous Company of the Possessed 

fore, if he is going to do anything in the cause of 
that which he holds dear, he must be about it. 
He would fain do everything. He would climb 
a mountain and cry to the world, " Listen, people ! 
This truth I know. It is for us all." Oh ! doubt- 
less, the people go their ways, for the most part 
unresponsive enough ; and that is heart-breaking. 
But the disciple has done his best, and nothing 
can rob him of the glow which comes from the 
exultant unity of conviction, purpose, and love. 
Man of Sorrows, was not the Master Himself the 
happiest person on earth ? 

Perhaps it may seem that I lay too much stress 
on the happiness of life. I reason as if each in- 
dividual should first consider his own well-being. 
As a matter of fact, if each separate life found a 
full, self-evolved development, the world would 
be saved and the Kingdom come. For no devel- 
opment can be achieved without service rendered 
and taken ; service is our natural aliment. But, 
supposing the initial question to be, " How can I 
most helpfully use my life ? " surely the answer 
is prompt, "By pouring yourself out in that 
which you love, by giving your happy, whole- 
hearted, triumphant best to the world." That 
which you love best must be your best. Love is 
always best. 

Yes, and perhaps joy is best too. Much has 
been written concerning the wisdom and strength 
[113] 



The Edge of the Woods 

which come from the right working of sorrow, 
concerning the excellent patience of pain, the 
valor of diflS-Culty. It is all very true. The par- 
ticular function of earth seems to be discipline. 
But joy harks back behind the earth, and cries 
forward, forward, worlds ahead. It is our most 
ancient heritage, our birthright, our desire. The 
soul that loses it for a time is restless, indefati- 
gable, until it finds it again. All our pain and 
sorrow must be worked over, fashioned back into 
joy ; or, rather, not back, but out into new joy, 
better than the old. We cannot let ourselves fall 
short of final happiness. 

In singling out the Possessed for special con- 
sideration, I imply that they are a class, that the 
world is not all given over. The reason for that 
is hard to find. There are surely interests enough 
about us everywhere. Perhaps some of us are 
not simple enough, not passive enough to begin 
with. We do not lay our hearts open to the uni- 
verse and say, " Now blow on me. ' Make me 
thy lyre even as the forest is.'" A certain 
naivete is needed to make each life fulfill itself. 
We ask too many questions : why, and why, and 
why ? Why not ? There are probably fifty posi- 
tive reasons for every negative one. 

The truly Possessed do not stop for reasons. It 
is reason enough that they must ; and they do. 
The Earth — good mother ! — must find comfort in 
[114] 



The Joyous Company of the Possessed 

them, her children who can take care of them- 
selves, who know what they want and take it. 
Their most headlong recklessness is better than 
the recurrent whining of others : " What shall I 
do next ? " And they are so amusing, so end- 
lessly funny, this debonair brotherhood ! Ke- 
freshing peals of laughter follow along the paths 
they tread, making the old world sweeter and 
wiser. We sane, sad people could never dispense 
with them. 

Ah, pause not, excellent fellowship, marching 
so sternly, careering so gaily through life's little 
length ! Perhaps we could do without your 
works ; we cannot decide about that for a century 
or so. It is certainly true that only by you are 
the best things done ; so, if anything lasts, it will 
be yours. Meantime, we cannot at all do without 
the good cheer of your presence. You make us 
sure that life is good. We start up, stand and 
listen. The breath of the universe blows on us 
too ; the great song rolls and echoes. We lean, 
we wait ; the contagion is strong. What if we 
should all yield and become Possessed ? What 
would happen then ? 



[115] 



XI 

ON A BENCH IN THE PARK 

'^ ^ ^ THAT'S the matter ? " she asked at 
%/%/ length, moving impulsively and al- 
▼ ▼ most involuntarily a little nearer to 
him. 

She had been v^atching him for some time — 
ever since he had taken his seat at the other end 
of her bench ; but he had not appeared to know 
that she was there. He had come along absently 
in the spring sunshine, and had dropped into his 
present position with the casual, accidental air of 
a dislodged pebble falling into place. When she 
spoke to him, he looked up slowly and enveloped 
her in a vague regard which she waited patiently 
to focus with her concrete presence. At last he 
saw her, and then she smiled and waited again 
while he fully made up his mind what it was that 
he saw. 

What she saw meantime was a tall, spare man 
of about forty-five. He was dressed rather care- 
lessly, as if he had not thought very much about his 
clothes when he was putting them on, and he wore 
an informal old felt hat pulled down over his 
eyes. But he was a gentleman ; with all her 
impulsiveness, she would hardly have ventured to 
speak to him if she had not been sure of that. 
[116] 



On a Bench in the Park 

The cut of his features was thoughtful and fine, 
expressing a curious mixture of whimsicalness 
and melancholy ; his hair was turning gray over 
the temples, and his shoulders stooped a little. 
Just at present the melancholy of his face swamped 
the humor entirely, so that it was a wonder she 
had guessed at the latter trait. But when he 
had quite completed his courteous scrutiny of her, 
he smiled and justified her penetration. He took 
his turn at moving inward along the bench. 

" I've just finished my novel," he answered. 

*• I thought so." She nodded and sighed, lean- 
ing back once more against the bench. "I've 
just finished my picture." 

She was a little younger than he ; but her hair 
also was turning gray, and, though her shoulders 
did not stoop, they were very thin underneath 
her flannel blouse. She was pretty, however. 
Her face had a bright, resolute look, and her eyes 
were shining above the depth of lurking melan- 
choly which she seemed to share with her chance 
companion as a common birthright. She was a 
lady too ; in his turn, he might not otherwise 
have cared to return her greeting. 

She was silent a moment. Then she laughed — 
such a funny little chuckle of mirth, founded on a 
basis of dejection, that his humor struggled to 
respond from beneath his ascendent gloom. But 
he could not manage it quite yet ; he was not 
[117] 



The Edge of the Woods 

ready for raillery. Seeing this, she fell grave 
again, and sympathy softened her voice. 

"I guess you haven't just finished it. Not 
this morning — nor yesterday afternoon." 

" IS^o, day before yesterday." 

" Oh, that's bad ! " She shook her head as 
intelligently as she had nodded it before. "I 
finished my picture this morning, and so I'm not 
very far down yet. I haven't really begun either 
to hate it or miss it." 

" Hate it ? " 

He lifted his eyebrows slightly. But there 
was no contention in his tone, only inquiry. 

" Perhaps you don't do that. Some people 
don't. I do always. It's a matter of bitter 
resentment with me that I should have been so 
laid hold of, possessed, by a thing which amounts 
to no more in the end than one of my pictures. 
This morning I adored my last picture ; I tolerate 
it now — with misgivings ; to-morrow I shall 
hate it." 

He was thoroughly aroused by this time, and 
he turned sideways on the bench and studied his 
companion with smiling eyes. 

" You will miss it, however ? " he ventured. 

" Oh ! " She was half scornfully disappointed. 
" Don't ask me stupid questions." 

" How long have you had your novel on 
hand ? " 

[118] 



On a Bench in the Park 

Since, somewhat abashed, he kept silence, she 
resumed the conversation and gave it a new turn. 

" A year and a half." 

He sighed as he answered ; but he was relieved 
at her restored friendliness, and his tone ac- 
knowledged it. 

" Kothing else ? " 

" No ; it has been my one occupation." 

" Not even some magazine papers or stories ? " 

" Not a single one." 

" Well, you are worse off than I am then ; and 
I'm sorry for you. I've been only eight months 
at work on my picture, and it has not been my 
exclusive concern. I have given my major atten- 
tion to it, and have always allowed it to take first 
place ; but still there were days when it wouldn't 
obey me, and then I sketched out a few new 
pictures which I can turn to now. Either " — she 
smiled at him brightly — " I am wiser than you, or 
I am not such a good worker." 

"There's a great difference in our trades," he 
commented after a moment's reflection. " I 
think I never knew a painter who didn't have 
several pictures on hand at once in all sorts of 
stages of incompletion ; whereas a writer is usu- 
ally found devoting himself entirely to one book 
at a time. The advantage is only one of many 
which you hold over us." 

Again she smiled. 

[119] 



The Edge of the Woods 

"Do you do that too? What inconsistent 
creatures we are ! We would neither of us dream 
of exchanging; yet you have confessed to an 
envy of me, and I am fully convinced that your 
craft is easier than mine. How simple and satis- 
fying to give one's entire attention to pouring 
oneself into a single cup ! It must have been a 
great year and a half which you are paying for 
now." 

He looked at her whimsically. The cloud of 
his melancholy was breaking fast, and the light of 
his humor was shining through in fuller and fuller 
gleams. 

" You talk like a summer tourist," he said. 
" There are lots of them up in the valley where I 
have my summer home, and they come and stare 
at me. ' Oh, Mr. Scribbler, what a fortunate per- 
son you are ! To live in this lovely place and 
have nothing to do but write all day ! ' " 

He was going to say more ; he had, in fact, 
taken a new breath and let a portion of it out in 
a burst — " Nothing to do ! " — but she interrupted 
him. 

" That is not kind in you. You know that I 
never implied or supposed for a moment that the 
pouring process was a smooth one. But it's what 
you live for, after all; and so it is your chief 
good." 

"Oh! I don't know." He leaned forward, 
[120] 



On a Bench in the Park 

with his elbows on his knees, and took his tired 
head between his hands. " Sometimes I think 
there isn't anything good about it. It's such 
blamed hard work, and it's so uncertain ! Even 
when you are doing it, you don't know exactly 
what it is you are doing, still less whether it's 
good or not ; and when you have finished it, it is 
never what you thought it was going to be. 
Hard work ? Good Lord ! I have sometimes 
been tempted to take those enthusiastic tourists 
into my study and show them the scrap-basket 
full of papers which I have discarded in the at- 
tempt to write one paragraph." 

" Of course ! " Her voice soothed and rallied 
him. " I scraped out and repainted one corner of 
this last canvas of mine just fifteen times." 

He looked up, met her eyes, and laughed as she 
had tried to make him laugh in the beginning. 
She joined him happily. 

" Why do we do it ? " He leaned his arm con- 
fidingly on the back of the seat, and looked at 
her attentive profile with bantering eyes. " Have 
you any theory as to what in creation makes 
us ? " 

She shook her head. 

" I've long since given up having theories." 

" We needn't," he went on ponderingly. " No- 
body asks us to. On the contrary, at the outset, 
our friends and editors and critics show a touch- 
[121] 



The Edge of the Woods 

ing unanimity in inviting us to refrain. Unless 
we are absolute fools, we know that we are com- 
mitting ourselves to difficulty and suspense and 
struggle, to disappointment and failure, to doubt, 
to all sorts of evils to which we are, by a nice 
irony, peculiarly sensitive. Yet off we go ! " 

In her turn, she pondered a moment. 

" When young writers come to you now for ad- 
vice, do you warn them away and counsel them 
to go into business ? " 

" No, I don't." He admitted the force of the 
question by the frank change in his tone as he an- 
swered it. "I almost always say, ' Go ahead — 
and the gods be with you ! ' " 

She made no comment, but she looked at him 
and smiled with one of her satisfied little nods. 

" Another strange thing about that is," he went 
on thoughtfully, " that I have yet to receive my 
first word of reproach from any of the people I 
have encouraged to start on this perilous career. 
Of course they haven't all of them made good. 
They haven't all of them persevered; some of 
them are now^ prospering mightily as business 
men. But even the latter look back on what they 
call their ' fling with literature ' (good term, too, 
only literature did all the flinging) with the unan- 
imous verdict that * those were good old days.' 
As for the scribblers who have stuck it out, they 
are quite touchingly loyal and grateful. One of 
[122] 



On a Bench in the Park 

them met me the other day, and stopped and 
shook hands with me, his nice young soul in his 
brave young eyes. 'I owe you everything,' he 
said, ' and I shall never forget it.' Owed me 
everything ! What do you think that meant ? 
Some hack work on an encyclopaedia, and an oc- 
casional story in a second-rate magazine. Of 
course he wasn't happy about it ; it wasn't at all 
what he had hoped to accomplish. But even in 
his disappointment, he still owed me everything." 

" Good ! " Her eyes shone with serene under- 
standing. " A man who feels that way keeps on 
until the first-class magazines come begging at his 
door." 

" Oh, but meantime ! " 

He pursed his lips and knit his brow as one who 
remembers unpleasant things. 

" Yes, meantime, I grant you " This time 

it was she who made the sudden concession and 
came to his point of view. " That meantime is 
pretty bad. One wonders that anybody has the 
courage to stick it out." 

" Doesn't one — just ? " 

He wheeled about, prepared to meet her eyes 
laughingly, but he paused. Her face was sober. 

'' Did it last so long with you ? " he asked 
gently. His eyes were compassionate. 

" Ten or fifteen years," she answered, with- 
drawing her gaze from an old gray rock and 
[123] 



The Edge of the Woods 

smiling — tardily. " Success (if it is success now 
— I'm not sure) came gradually when it came at 
all, and I don't know how to date it. But it 
wasn't the length of time that I minded ; it was 
the uncertainty." 

" Yes, that's the devil Excuse me," he 

said sympathetically. 

" Isn't it ? " She not only excused him, but 
thanked him with her glance. " Even the most 
assured person can't know absolutely that he's 
going to succeed ; and if he isn't, what a waste of 
life he is guilty of ! On the other hand, if he is, in 
the end, no amount of labor, patience, delay, should 
be counted too much. It's a cruel predicament." 

" I wrote for five years with no success," he 
told her, " and then I concluded that I had made 
as long an experiment as was decent, and I shut 
my desk and went down-town to see if I could 
find a business opening. While I was gone, my 
sister went to my desk in search of a pencil, found 
my last manuscript, read it, and sent it to a pub- 
lisher. Its acceptance and the offer of a clerk- 
ship in a grocery firm came in the same mail." 

" My ! " She held her breath girlishly. " That 
was a narrow escape." 

" Indeed it was." He mocked himself by his 
tone. " You see, in my case, it is my sister to 
whom ' I owe everything.' " 

" Or Fate," she pondered. '' 1 like to believe in 
[124] 



On a Bench in the Park 

Fate. It's too harrowing to think that some 
Hawthorne or Bronte may have given up and 
turned away before the very threshold of ' The 
Scarlet Letter ' or ' Jane Eyre.' " 

" Better a thousand failures than that," he as- 
sented. 

" That would be the worst kind of failure," she 
corrected him. 

"Well, as for failure " He meditated. 

" Do you know the real difference between failure 
and success ? " 

" Indeed, I don't." She met him earnestly. " I 
guess they're pretty well mixed up together. My 
last picture failed to express what I meant to put 
into it, yet it hung on the line in the Exhibition." 

" Precisely. For my part, the only success I 
have ever achieved lies in the next novel which I 
propose to write." 

She laughed. 

" Your best salvation, then, would seem to lie in 
getting to work at that novel as fast as you can." 

" Too tired." He shook his head. 

" Don't want to, either, can't bear the thought," 
he went on presently. " I wonder if you know 
that state of mind." 

" Yes." She considered. " Yes, I suppose I 
do ; but explain it to me." 

" Well, I am reluctant to set my hand to a 
work which I know is going to rule me for 
[125] 



The Edge of the Woods 

months and maybe years; I shrink from the 
strife and exertion, I " 

'^ Eesent it ! " she broke in. " That's what I 
said in the first place. But my resentment comes 
afterwards, when the work is over and I see how 
little it amounts to." 

" You never have any misgivings beforehand ? " 

" No, or I should hardly be able to make a begin- 
ning at all. But sometimes in the midst of things, 
I have doubts, and that is — please say it again." 

" Hell," he supplied, with a little variation. 

"You're right." He took up the thread at 
once. " It's that way with me too. The abstract 
notion of sitting down and handing myself over 
body and soul to another novel is positively repug- 
nant to me now. But of course I've a fine new 
scheme in my brain ; and some morning I shall 
get up and drift half unconsciously to my desk 
and begin my first chapter. I shan't realize ex- 
actly what I am doing, and all that I do realize 
will be clear joy, for beginnings are seventh 
heavens. Jove ! such rapidity, such conviction ! 
The words cover the paper of their own accord, 
the people leap into life, the story shapes itself, 
the significance hovers ; at last, at last, a real 
masterpiece is coming into life. I am convinced 
that no variety of human rapture is to be com- 
pared to that of beginning a novel. Then " 

He broke off and looked at her, and she looked 
[126] 



On a Bench in the Park 

back at him with a rueful little smile of full 
understanding. They both laughed, and sighed. 

" I wonder what it is that happens," he mused, 
leaning forward to poke the grass with his stick. 
" All of a sudden, without any warning ! It is as 
if a merry companion, hand in hand with whom 
you were climbing a hill, should abruptly sit 
down and say, * Now, this is as far as I mean to 
go on my own feet; you must carry me.' Of 
course, when she does that, you look her over and 
find her to be not half so attractive as you had at 
first thought her ; she is heavy, unwieldy, sure to 
be a grievous burden. But you are loth to aban- 
don the hope which has come to mean much to 
you ; so you tackle her and start off, staggering, 
up the mountain-side. That's where your trouble 
begins. She rides you willfully, waywardly, be- 
traying you into snares and pitfalls, turning you 
out of your path altogether, mocking you, goad- 
ing you. It is strange that you stick to her ; yet, 
after all, perhaps it is she who does the sticking — 
you are her slave." 

" Yet you don't hate her ? " his comrade put in, 
her eyes bright with sympathetic excitement. 

" No, oddly enough, I don't," he replied. " I 
generally respect her the more, the farther we get 
along. I've no illusions about her ; she is not the 
airy, transcendent masterpiece I took her to be at 
first. But she's solid — I've proved that ! — and I 
[127] 



The Edge of the Woods 

have sober hopes of making something of her by 
and by, or of her making something of me — I'm 
not sure just which." 

" Are your first chapters always your best ? " 

It was a thoughtful question, groping in uncer- 
tainty ; but he caught it up as if it had been a 
challenge, and flung its answer back. 

" IS'o, confound it ! That's one of the things 
that madden me most about the whole business. 
Sometimes I have to throw away all those first 
chapters which I wrote in such an ecstasy ; 
whereas later chapters, over which I toil despair- 
ingly, turn out to be the best in the book." 

" Yes." She confirmed him with serious eyes. 
" Most of my intended triumphs go into the rub- 
bish heap, but my forlorn hopes have several 
times turned out pretty well." 

'^ How do you account for it ? " 

" I told you that I had long since given up try- 
ing to account for anything." 

They sat in silence a few minutes ; then — 

"The upshot is," he reflected, "that we are 
both of us perversely engaged in the most unsatis- 
factory of occupations." 

" The upshot is," she serenely denied him, 
" that we are engaged in the most nearly satisfy- 
ing of all occupations." 

" You really think it's worth while ? " 

He disarmed her by the simplicity of his tone 
[128] 



On a Bench in the Park 

and the guilelessness of his glance ; so that, in- 
stead of scoffing at him, as she seemed at first 
inclined, she met him on his own ground and 
answered quietly : 

'' Yes." 

" Why ? " 

Her eyes widened ; this was going too far. 
But he hastened to forestall the words that he 
divined as lying just behind her quickened ex- 
pression. 

" I know — that's not good form. I should 
never put such a question to you if we were 
talking for the benefit of a circle of listeners at 
the Authors' Club. But here we are quite off 
by ourselves, and we don't even know each other's 
names " 

He coaxed her, smiling. 

" It isn't the matter of form," she answered. 
" I don't mind forms or lack of forms. But " 

She hesitated. 

" Out with it ! You didn't mind calling me 
stupid a few minutes ago." 

" No, but " — her eyes met his with a twinkle — 
" I like you better now." 

"Nevermind." He acknowledged the tribute. 
" Knowing that, — thank you — I shall be the less 
likely to take offense at anything you may say. 
Perhaps I do already understand why our trades 
are good, but I'd like to hear you say it." 
[129] 



The Edge of the Woods 

She was silent for two or three moments, her 
expression balancing curiously between humor 
and simplicity. Then the simplicity won. 

" Our work is good," she said slowly, " because 
it deals with the highest issues of life. It has a 
limitless sphere, it skirts the edges of infinity, 
and it has all the room there is to grow in. 
People come to the end of their material interests, 
but they can never come to the end of their spiritual 
concerns. It is therefore a much solider task to 
minister to spirits than to bodies. Painting and 
writing call into play our keenest faculties, and 
they incite us to develop yet keener ones. They 
link us with God " 

She broke off, and again the humor stirred in 
her eyes. 

" Haven't I said enough ? " 

" Well," — he stood up and took off his hat 
and held out his hand — " I'm glad I met you." 

" So am I." She nodded again, with her funny 
little air of satisfaction. " You needed me. 
Good-bye." 

As they parted, a lady in a carriage turned 
quickly to her companion and said : 

" Look ! See those two people over there, 
just beyond the big rock ? Well, he's Max Ben- 
ton, the novelist ; and she's Lucy Penfield, the 
landscape painter. They're great celebrities." 

[130] 



XII 
THE DECLINE OF MELANCHOLY 

IT seems to be time that somebody be- 
stirred himself anew on behalf of an ancient 
cause. To be sure, it is a cause which has 
been already so well defended, by such a succes- 
sion of excellent names, that the wonder is that its 
case has not remained permanently settled. Per- 
haps the reader may think that it is also a wonder 
that any modern pen should presume to tamper 
with a theme upon which Fletcher, Milton and 
Keats have meditated. But Fletcher, Milton and 
Keats are dead — worse luck ! — and their present suc- 
cessors seem all given over to radiant good cheer. 
Now, at its first utterance, that latter statement 
does not sound very alarming. There is no menace 
in mirth, Keats's and Fletcher's muses could 
laugh, and Milton wrote "L' Allegro" as well as 
"II Penseroso." Did he, however, quite as well ? 
That question gives one pause. At least, it may 
probably be affirmed that there was never a lover 
of melancholy who was not also a lover of joy. 
What says the beautiful ode itself ? 

" Ay, in the very temple of Delight 
YeiPd Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous 
tongue 

[ 131 ] 



The Edge of the Woods 



Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 
And be among her cloudy trophies hung." 



When, therefore, a few years ago, the world 
began to concern itself seriously with the study 
and the pursuit of happiness, the pensive observer 
gave cordial assent to the new enterprise. Go to ! 
there is a time to laugh and a time to dance, and 
evidently this is it. One would, perhaps, have 
been better pleased and much more truly con- 
vinced, if the pursuit had not been quite so seri- 
ous. Spontaneity seems an essential element in 
joy ; also unexpectedness and unconsciousness. 
But this is not an unconscious age. It is given 
over to know itself, to take itself thoroughly 
in hand and exploit itself. To every era its own 
peculiar method of dealing with life. The present 
method is deliberate intention. 

Wandering in the woods one day, we may have 
heard a sweet bird sing far above our heads. 
Only once; the lovely strain was not repeated, 
and the singer flew away among the leaves so 
swiftly and so silently that we had no glimpse of 
him. See, now, what a loss was there — irrep- 
arable, were it not for the museums. But in the 
latter, all sweet birds are gathered firmly upon 
twigs — voiceless, to be sure, but utterly accessi- 
ble, apparent to us from all sides, neatly labelled 
[ 132 ] 



The Decline of Melancholy 

and explained. We have only to walk up to the 
big glass case, identify our special bird, and, 
knowing him now for what he is, lay intelligent 
and robust claim to him. That is the modern 
method. 

To a great many people it seems to be emi- 
nently satisfactory, and therefore it should not be 
called in question — so far as they are concerned. 
They like to have their bird well in hand and study 
its markings. Moreover, once having learned its 
ways, they think they can stalk it securely here- 
after and rejoice in it all day long. Peace be 
with them ! May their opera-glasses never disap- 
point them. 

But should they not also wish us peace — us, 
who are not so carefully minded, who like our 
birds best on the wing, who even find no fault 
with the silence that closes the perfect song ? 
They should do so, but they do not always ; and 
it is the growing energy of their desire to convert 
us all to their way of thinking that alarms us 
now. The study of happiness is moving out from 
the museums (which one could visit or ignore, as 
one's temperament prompted), and is committing 
itself to a sort of University Extension career 
which very seriously threatens the cause of melan- 
choly all over the world. Optimist Clubs and 
Happiness Classes are springing up everywhere, 
and their pamphlets are reaching even to our 
[133] 



The Edge of the Woods 

" fountainheads and pathless groves." There is 
tremendous power in a great popular movement, 
a wave of feeling which embraces half a popula- 
tion. Are we all going to be coerced into unend- 
ing good cheer ? 

Curious, truly, is the turn of thought which, at 
this late day, has set the world to supposing that 
happiness is the one thing which it most desires. 
It ought to know itself better. 

Perhaps we have most of us heard of the man 
who became a member of one of the sects which 
make for health and serenity. For a while, he was 
a good member — healthy, even-tempered, smil- 
ing ; but by and by a vague suspicion of change 
came over him. He ceased his regular attendance 
at the meetings ; he resumed his headaches, and 
then his gout ; and finally it was borne in upon 
his brothers in the faith that his defection was 
serious. One of these brothers called on him to 
reason with him. 

" What is the matter ? Can it be that you are 
falling off from us ? " 

" Well, I am afraid so." 

" Have you any reason to give ? " 

" Only this — I may as well tell you : I got tired 
of being so blamed happy all the time." 

This little story seems to me to contain a pro- 
found significance. Tired? He was bored to 
death, the excellent, natural man ! He had been 
[134] 



The Decline of Melancholy 

used to variety, to interesting ups and downs in 
life, to invigorating surprises ; and here he found 
himself confined to an endlessly smiling dead- 
level — smiles and smiles and smiles. 

One can see how it all came to pass. At some 
time in his experience, he had had too many sur- 
prises ; his road had gone plunging up and down 
in a manner that tried him greatly. Human na- 
ture is prone to think that its present circum- 
stances are going to last forever ; it seemed to 
this good man that his only salvation lay in 
breaking away from the hills of life which were 
using him so severely. Doubtless, at first, the 
tranquil meadows of his new faith — with their 
carefully kept fences and their bridges over all 
the streams — had satisfied him deeply. He 
needed rest, and he had found it, and he was very 
glad. But rest could not please him forever ; nay, 
beyond a certain point, rest grew unrest to him. 
Therefore it happened at last that he looked back 
across the fences, back to the beautiful, perilous 
hills, the threatening hills, the alluring hills, the 
very naughty, mysterious hills, sure to affiict him 
now and again with the perversity of their w^ays, 
but also sure to delight him beyond any skill of 
these flat meadows ; and, being an honest and 
resolute man, he leaped the fence with a mighty 
bound and fled away. 

I make not the smallest doubt that he fell into 
[135] 



The Edge of the Woods 

a torrent the very first thing — so out of practice 
and so eager he was by this time — and that he 
emerged, dripping and laughing, to dry himself 
on a good hard rock in the face of the sun. Was 
he glad to get back, do you think ? Was he glad 
to get back ? 

Even if the world really did supremely desire 
happiness, it would still betray a curious lack of 
knowledge of the rules of the game, if it set out 
as a body upon deliberate pursuit. Etymology 
warns it at the start : happiness must happen. A 
gift of the gods, a favor truly divine, it comes 
most fully and graciously when we do not look 
for it, it thrills us with the clearest meaning when 
it is unexpected. 

But perhaps the knell has sounded for that kind 
of happiness nowadays. We are fast becoming 
such competent masters of our fate, captains of 
our soul, etc., that the old gods will presently have 
to look alive to find any way to bless us at all, 
any unconsidered corner in which to cast their 
gracious seed. " Oh, thank you, yes ! That is 
the old-fashioned wild plant, I see," we may be 
supposed to make our embarrassed acknowledg- 
ment. " But I already have several beds sown 
thick with the cultivated variety. I water it with 
the hose every night, and pick large bunches for 
the table every morning." What can the poor 
gods do with such a capable, provident lot? 
[ 136 ] 



The Decline of Melancholy 

Wash their hands of us and depart once for all to 
their Parnassus ? Apollo forf end ! 

The circulars of the Good-cheer Clubs advise us 
to study the faces of the people we meet in the 
streets and see if they look happy. Some of them 
do, yes — the younger ones. It is refreshing to 
meet the glance of the bright young eyes and hear 
the music of the gay young voices. But the older 
faces are sober enough ; and is it not their appeal 
that, in the long run, we answer most gratefully ? 
Is it not in the graver eyes that our own eyes rest 
most securely ? The faces that rise first to my 
mind, as I summon up remembrance of beautiful 
countenances, are not the cheerful ones I have 
known, but the most thoughtful, even the saddest. 
There would almost seem to be something wrong 
about a face that still looked entirely happy after 
thirty or so. What had its owner been about ? 
Dreaming instead of living ? Or, if li\dng, refus- 
ing to take the consequences of failure, loss and 
regret? E'obody could live and not fail some- 
times ; and nobody could fail and not retain a scar. 

It is the welfare of the world that lies at the 
heart of all the desire of the Good-cheer Clubs, 
and nobler desire than that there is none. But the 
first question to be decided is whether happiness 
and welfare are necessarily synonymous. We 
have learned a good deal from our old friends, 
difficulty, strife, and disappointment ; had we not 
[ 137 ] 



The Edge of the Woods 

better trust them a little longer yet ? Sage old 
Fletcher may have been half in jest when he 
declared : 

^'There's naught in this life sweet, 
If men were wise to see't, 
But only melancholy — 
O sweetest melancholy ! '' 

But I think he knew what he was saying. 
Under the spell of sadness, one often sees and 
learns things that are worth all the revelations of 



[138] 



XIII 
A PORTRAIT OF THE DEVIL 

THE beginning of a sermon presents one 
of the recurring crises by which life is 
pleasantly diversified. The listener set- 
tles himself and looks up at the pulpit, waiting. 
Is the command of the text and of the opening 
sentences to go forth upon his attention and hold 
it ? Or is his fancy to be left free for the next 
twenty minutes to wander along the congenial 
and restful paths of personal meditation ? 

I rather hoped that the latter turn might be 
given to my mind when, at the close of a full 
Sunday a little while ago, I sank back in my seat 
and, along with the rest of the congregation, ad- 
dressed myself to immobility. I was tired and I 
was thoughtful (a mental combination favorable 
to dreams) ; I was moved by the beauty of the 
service, too, and in a mood to deposit myself at 
the foot of the altar and lie there unseen. Nobody 
would have been the wiser for that act of abandon. 
But such oblivion was not to be ; for, with his 
very first sentence, the preacher laid hold upon my 
attention and gripped it — even brought me swing- 
ing around in my seat to face him more squarely. 
" I suppose," — thus he serenely began — " I sup- 
[139] 



The Edge of the Woods 

pose there is no one before me to-night who does 
not believe in a personal devil." 

There is, of course, nothing a congregation — or 
a congregated unit — can do when a preacher 
commits it thus to opinions which it does not hold. 
I could not rise up forthwith and declare, " I do 
not believe in a personal devil." But perhaps that 
was just as well. I certainly should be sorry now 
to have done anything to interfere with the prog- 
ress of one of the most interesting homiletical ex- 
periences I have ever had. 

Being uncontradicted — our uniform silence giv- 
ing consent to his proposition — the preacher went 
on to unfold his conception of the Satanic person- 
ality. I listened, fairly holding my breath in my 
sudden interest. As I did so, my critical self ran 
on beside me and commented on the situation in 
that curious double play of reflection which is 
common to our inner consciousness. "Why are 
you so absorbed ? " it demanded. " I haven't seen 
you so intent in a month of Sundays. I'll tell you 
why. It's because the preacher has got hold of a 
vivid idea which entirely puts to shame your 
vague notions about ' good in the wrong place,' 
' a man's own lower nature,' 'a mere negation of 
good.' A personal devil is much more interesting 
than such abstractions." I was acknoAvledging 
the truth of these intimations in a hurried sort of 
mental aside, when the preacher brought me up 
[140] 



A Portrait of the Devil 

with a round turn, uniiied my attention, and con- 
centrated it all on one idea. 

" If I had a blackboard here," he said, " and 
asked you, one by one, to draw a picture of the 
devil, I suppose you would almost all depict him 
in the medieval fashion, with horns and a tail." 

That suggestion won me over completely. I 
gave my whole consent to the initial assumption 
of the devil's personality, and spent all the rest of 
the evening drawing pictures of him. 

A picture, rather. There was only one that 
rose from my deeper consciousness slowly in 
response to my command on myself to deal with 
this problem. ]^o horns, no tail, no lurid hue, no 
crafty glance. ]^o glorious " son of the morning " 
brightness hurling down a steep abyss to ruin and 
eclipse. I*Tothing that I had ever before seen or 
heard of as a devil design. Where does one's con- 
sciousness get these ideas to surprise one withal ? 
I had not even dreamed that I had any convictions 
from which to draw a picture of the devil. 

It represented an angel, tall and still, the sad- 
dest angel I had ever seen in my whole imagina- 
tion. He was standing looking down, when I 
saw him, with his hands hanging at his sides and 
his eyes idly observing a swarm of men in a 
market-place ; but it was evident from the slow 
sweep of his garment that he had been moving 
among these people on some mournful errand. 
[Ml] 



The Edge of the Woods 

There was a mute look about him, patient, obe- 
dient, but so full of despair that, in excess of 
compassion, I made haste to turn my eyes away. 

How should one know that this was the devil ? 
Thus I queried at the beginning of my investiga- 
tions. There was nothing about the figure to 
indicate anything but angelhood. Perhaps he 
was only an angel, brooding over the woes of the 
world. Bub, no, his expression went further than 
that; it was too stricken for mere compassion, 
too full of a hopeless horror. There was only 
one thing that could give rise to such an expres- 
sion, and that was the service of evil. 

How, then, should one be sure that the domi- 
nating figure was angelic in his nature? This 
question was answered by every line of the beau- 
tiful form, by the melancholy candor of the eyes 
and the stern sweetness of the mouth, by the very 
horror of evil too. JS'obody could look so appeal- 
ingly unhappy over sin unless he were divine. 

What was the picture's ultimate meaning? 
Where was the key to this unfortunate situation 
of a divine creature deliberately committed to the 
cause of evil ? I explored the rest of the scene to 
see if it would enlighten me. 

A great swarm of people, restless, uneasy ; busy 

and prospering, evidently, but not very happy about 

it. They were trafficking in a big market-place, 

and the group of them just behind the angel was 

[142] 



A Portrait of the Devil 

given over to cheating and stealing, with hard 
and cruel eyes. Had the angel's passing made 
them behave thus ? Oh, woe ! no wonder the 
poor creature stood smitten with despair. I 
looked closer, and, sure enough, the hem of the 
angel's robe was edged with sharp pricks and 
goads. The path he had taken through the 
crowd was as marked as the furrow in the wake 
of a ship ; one could trace it by agitation. But, 
unlike the furrow — although the stress of the tur- 
moil receded and subsided — its end was not the 
same old ocean as that which lies before the prow 
of a ship ; and just here I gradually discovered 
in what the peculiar significance of the picture 
consisted. 

The faces in the track of the angel were worth 
studying. In the first place, they were distin- 
guished from the other faces in the crowd, not 
only by their unhappiness but by their intelli- 
gence. The other faces were bland and vague ; 
these faces hnew. Knew what ? Well, to begin 
with, craft and greed, the lust of their own advan- 
tage, the hope of their neighbor's disaster. I 
have said that the group just behind the angel 
was absolutely hateful. But the group behind 
that wore a different expression — puzzled, ar- 
rested, as if its members had come upon a lurk- 
ing dissatisfaction with their achievements which 
astonished them very much. It was here that the 
[143] 



The Edge of the Woods 

conscious unhappiness began ; the first group had 
no misgivings about its enjoyment. The third 
group had tried to cast off its obscure disappoint- 
ment and laugh it to scorn ; it was busy cheating 
and stealing again — but with a difference. Its 
faces were anxious, almost tormented ; its gestures 
betrayed a mad haste to keep going and not stop 
to think. In some of these eyes there was a wist- 
fulness which promised much. The fourth group 
was, spiritually speaking, just frankly down in 
the dust ; it was having a desperate time. I 
think its members were cursing and denying God 
in the usual inconsistent fashion of the exasper- 
ated atheist. Fine, when a man begins to care 
enough about God to deny Him so frantically ! 

The fifth group But there were so many 

groups in this strange scene, which by and by 
lost its static character and became more like a 
vision than a picture, that I shall hardly have 
space to describe them all. Nor is such minute- 
ness necessary. The process was the important 
thing for the observer to note. That went on 
steadily — from perplexity and disgust and rebel- 
lion to honest consideration and sober scrutiny. 

It was a gradual process ; for several spaces the 
change in the groups was very slight. Then sud- 
denly there came a group that started up, bared 
its arms, and set itself to fight the angel. That 
was a thrilling sight ; I caught my breath when I 
[144] 



A Portrait of the Devil 

came upon it. The poor angel ! That sad, subdued 
creature to be obliged to fight ! But he roused 
himself manfully to the fray, took a sharp sword 
(he knew how to use it too), buckled on a great 
shield, and let the whole group have at him. It 
was wonderful to see how they worked, and what 
an effect the conflict had upon them. As I 
watched, I became aware of a special importance 
in their proceeding. It was as if some one had 
touched me and said, " There, this is the kernel 
of the w^hole matter. Do you understand ? " 
For, as they contended, the faces of these war- 
ring people changed, and took on strength, nobil- 
ity, and purpose. Even the man who was worsted 
and fell, pricked by the sword of the angel, gave 
from the dust a high look which said that he 
meant to get up again ; that, as it was, he found 
himself better off than he had been before he be- 
gan to fight. As for the people who conquered, 
they were more beautiful than the angel himself ; 
they were men at last. When they emerged into 
the next group, they stood straight and brave as 
no other group in the picture had stood before. 
Their intelligent faces were lighted with knowl- 
edge ; they had learned the meaning of life and 
they meant to act upon it. The earth's destiny 
could be trusted to them, since they had tried to 
mar it and had achieved a futile misery ; they 
were secure in their virtue because they had had 
[145] 



The Edge of the Woods 

to fight for it. Human holiness had been found 
too precious a thing to be had for nothing or to 
be dispensed with. 

The last group in the wake of the angel stood 
side by side with a group which his passing 
had not yet disturbed. (I did not know that 
there were any such groups in the world, but 
perhaps a symbolic picture like this must not 
be taken too literally.) Both groups were en- 
gaged in the same occupation of love and service. 
But there was a world-wide difference in their 
methods of performing the amiable office. The 
group which had never known the angel was 
gentle and docile and matter-of-fact. Its mem- 
bers loved one another because they did not know 
how to do anything else. Their ministrations 
were therefore instinctive, almost unconscious, 
and were received quite in the spirit in which 
they were offered. There was nothing very 
exciting about the devotion of this group. But 
the other group — what a fire of love burned in 
the worn faces, what an eloquent longing informed 
the hands that reached out one to another ! There 
was remorse here as well as tenderness ; shame, 
repentance, atonement. These people knew what 
it meant to love because they had known what it 
meant to hate. The angel had taught them 
nothing less than the whole secret of life. 

I describe this picture just as I saw it and for 
[146] 



A Portrait of the Devil 

what it is worth. If it should happen to corre- 
spond at all to the inscrutable facts of the case, 
then God would be seen omnipotent truly, and 
every page of history would proclaim His wisdom. 
But before I left the church, I knelt and prayed, 
"O God, have mercy upon Thy servant, the 
devil." 



[147] 



XIV 
HOOSICX JUNCTION 

I AM sure that some readers must know the 
spot. It connects the Boston and Maine 
Kaikoad with the Bennington and Rutland. 
It consists of a dingy, one-roomed station, a 
dilapidated saloon, a water tank, and that is all. 
High and dry in the glare of the sun it lies 
on the baking cinders, and not one solace does it 
hold out to the miserable wayfarers who spend 
grudging hours in it. Always hours. I never 
knew any one who ever waited less than an hour 
and a half in Hoosick Junction. I myself have 
spent three hours there at a stretch; in the 
course of my life, I suppose I have lived there a 
month. There is hardly anywhere to be found a 
better example of bare, practical utilitarianism. 
You are travelling ; that is a business proceeding, 
to be undertaken in a businesslike manner. You 
require a room to wait in ; good, here it is. You 
are hungry ? Really, that is not the railroad's 
affair. Bring a lunch, and stuff the box or the 
paper bag into the stove afterwards. Hoosick 
Junction holds itself sternly aloof from all the 
luxuries of life ; those go through in trunks, along 
with your Sunday hat. 

There was a time when Christian Science, real- 
[148] 



Hoosick Junction 



izing the possibilities of Hoosick Junction, laid 
hold upon it as a centre of propagation. Beside 
the stove stood a plain deal table strewn with 
pamphlets concerning the Faith — testimonials, 
magazines, sermons. The idea was a good one. 
I remember that I frequently held out against 
the documents for an hour and a quarter, and 
then suddenly gave in and devoured every page. 
It is my habit now to converse with a certain 
discriminating tolerance on the subject of Chris- 
tian Science. Little does any one dream that the 
husks of my knowledge have been snatched by a 
starving hand in the deserts of Hoosick Junction. 

But Christian Science has long since with- 
drawn, and Hoosick Junction is God-forsaken 
(impious, but expressive term !). Three framed 
time-tables hang on the wall, also a fly-specked 
"Excursion" announcement, and a dusty clock. 
For the rest, there is but the row of seats all 
along the wall, the large, central, presiding stove, 
and half a dozen human beings, despairing utterly. 

Yet it is this dreary tarry ing-place which now 
affords me unfailing refuge from the very ennui 
which itself used always to produce. When I 
find myself bored in society, when I cannot sleep 
at night, when my eyes fail me and I must 
not read, I retreat to Hoosick Junction and all 
is well with me. Is that not curious ? But it is 
the exquisite triumph and humor of circumstance 

[ 149 ] 



The Edge of the Woods 

in this mutable world that one never can tell 
from one day to another what curse is sud- 
denly going to turn on one and bestow a blessing. 

I had no anticipations of pleasure as, a few 
months ago, I found myself once more caught in 
the net and being dragged Hoosick Junction- 
ward. By dint of changing my winter resi- 
dence, I had managed to avoid the place for a 
year or two ; but no long remission of destiny 
could be vouchsafed me. I stepped out of the 
train, dispirited, hot, and exceeding dusty. The 
tunnel was no long way behind me, that other 
horror to which Hoosac, changing its spelling 
guilefully, has given its ill-omened name. Half a 
dozen people descended with me ; we looked at 
one another askance. Our trunks were hurled 
out at us from the door of the baggage car, 
the engine rang an impatient bell, the train 
drew off and left us. Left us! 'No words can 
fitly convey the degree of that desolating deser- 
tion on the part of humanity. There were we, 
stranded, beyond the pale, ostracized to a No 
Man's Land, utterly forlorn. 

It is said that misery loves company. But 
certainly we in Hoosick Junction kept our dis- 
tance well. With a certain defiant resignation to 
the needs of mortality, we retreated, each to a 
remote section of the wooden bench, and opened 
our boxes of lunch. We were oddly shamefaced 
[150] 



Hoosick Junction 



about this proceeding, strangely secretive and 
savage — like wild beasts going off to their lairs. 
One would think that to eat was a final disgrace. 
Then, all the crumbs being brushed away and 
our self-respect reestablished, we glanced at the 
clock with a pathetic hope. A quarter past 
twelve, and our train was due at one-forty ! Ah, 
then despair overwhelmed us quite. We col- 
lapsed on our uncomfortable benches, and the life 
went out of our faces, leaving us all dull masks. 

I had a book in my bag ; I never travel without 
a book. But Hoosick Junction has something 
about it inimical to all moods. If I start on my 
journey rejoicing in the Oxford Book of English 
Yerse, by the time I reach Hoosick Junction I 
can tolerate nothing but Sherlock Holmes. Ac- 
cordingly, on this particular day, I cast my com- 
panion volume from me, rose, shook myself, and 
left the station, intent upon a walk. There was 
nowhere to walk except along the track, but that 
did very well. J^o fear at least of a train's ar- 
rival ; — if there only had been ! I tested my old- 
time dexterity by walking along the rails for 
a while; then I climbed the bank and picked 
strawberries ; then I sat down under the shade of 
a tree and fell to surveying the country. It was 
not a bad little spot of earth, if one only looked 
at it honestly, freeing one's mind from the preju- 
dice which distorted the trees and fields. After 
[151] 



The Edge of the Woods 

all, they were real trees and fields, green and fair, 
clothed upon with the graciousness peculiar to 
their class. In the near distance were low rolling 
hills, and close at hand was a river, a wide and 
golden-brown, chattering stream, calling to mind 
the happy lines, — 

^^ And shallow rivers to whose falls 
Melodious birds sing madrigals.'' 

What a pity, I thought to myself, that such a bit 
of earth's beauty should be condemned to eternal 
perversion in the cause of dreariness ! 

Then, suddenly, full-grown and strong, in the 
Minerva-like manner of all ideas, one of the most 
exciting projects I have ever harbored came into 
my mind ; and I gave myself up to its contempla- 
tion with such effect that I nearly missed my train. 

I had lately been longing to be of use, real, 
definite, tangible use to my kind. Here was my 
chance. I would make my home at Hoosick 
Junction, and would open a lunch and reading 
room for the solace of the stranded souls cast up 
here every day. !N"ot any lunch counter in the 
station (perish the fly-specked thought of the 
thing ! ), but even a little house down by the 
river, under the cool green trees. A board walk 
should run from the station thither, the distance 
was not very great ; a neat little sign should di- 
rect the people, thev could reach me easily. Once 
" [152] 



Hoosick Junction 



there, how their poor tired hearts would rejoice ! 
For they would find broad verandas, with rock- 
ing-chairs and hammocks. Inside the door, a 
cool, wide hall would give them grateful wel- 
come, with an open fire on chilly days, deep easy 
chairs, and plenty of books and magazines. Be- 
yond the hall, a dining-room would await their 
patronage—round tables, pretty china, flowers, 
muslin-curtained windows. Up-stairs there would 
be some bedrooms for such travellers as were ut- 
terly forespent ; hot water and soap for every 
one, best boon that I could offer. I myself should 
stand at the door to welcome all my guests as 
they came. I should charge them something for 
their lunch, that a relation of independence and 
mutual respect might exist between us ; but be- 
yond that, all the house would be free — their 
house as well as mine. I think I should love 
every one of them, they would have such need of 
me, and I should be so very sure that I was help- 
ing them. What a happy life ! 

By the time my train whistled and I made off 
along the track to the station, I was all aglow 
with my project. As I ran, I cast my eye about 
for a pleasant site for my house. And ever since, 
my enthusiasm has waxed rather than waned ; so 
that now the name " Hoosick Junction " is no 
longer a symbol of gloom, but one of all possible 
high romance, of dream and aspiration. 
[153] 



The Edge of the Woods 

In thought, I have long since completed my 
house, have furnished it and received through its 
portal dear people of many kinds. For the most 
part, they are farmers, good simple country folk 
whom I love ; but in the summer the tide of vaca- 
tion travellers sets my way ; and artists and poets 
come wandering by, refreshing me with notions. 
I have never taken such a wide view of humanity, 
nor loved it so well, as since I built my Hoosick 
Junction house. Now and then — what joy and 
surprise ! — a familiar face approaches along the 
board walk, and I run to grasp the hand of an old 
friend come up to visit me. Then, in the evening, 
when the trains are all past and the work of the 
day is over, what famous talks we have, shut in 
our lonely seclusion, the open fire bright at our 
feet, the river singing outside ! 

But, alas ! what is the value of a mere dream ? 
It would take a fortune to build my house, and 
fortune have I none. I can only direct my eager 
thoughts wistfully to their desired goal, and hope 
that they may work some slight, unconscious alle- 
viation. 

Poor wayfarers, at this moment propping your 
weary frames on the wooden benches beneath the 
Excursion announcement, do you realize how, if I 
had my way, you would all be lying in deep, 
soft chairs, reading novels and magazines ? Does 
the knowledge do any good ? 
[154] 



XV 

CAVE-DWELLERS, OR THE HALL-BED- 
ROOM 

AND yet it is not precisely about either of 
the historical extremes of civilization 
mentioned above that I am going to 
write. The abode which I celebrate has no name 
of generic import. Ignored by the masses, it 
plays its part humbly enough in the process of 
evolution ; and few are they who discover its 
charms, though many are they who scorn it. 

It lies up three flights of stairs, at the very top 
of the house. On the second and third floors, its 
intention is thwarted and it is perverted into 
closets. But it remains patient and bides its time, 
climbing higher, determined on consummation. 
A closet quietly setting itself to become a room — 
what else is the scheme of life ? Arrived at the 
fourth floor, it looks about. The fourth floor 
front and the fourth floor back and the two legit- 
imate hall-bedrooms have appropriated all the 
windows. Now of course a window is the sine 
qua non of a room, its distinction from a closet. 
Have a window or fail. The dauntless closet ! It 
settles itself in the midst of the house, lifts its 
[165] 



The Edge of the Woods 

firm intention one degree higher still, and breaks 
through the roof to the sky. There ! Is not 
that an attainment? Let the other rooms look 
forth, if they will, on narrow sections of city 
streets, dreary and confused ; this little room will 
look up to the stars and have the heavens for 
boundary. It has not only won for itself the 
roomship which it desired ; it has become a unique 
abode, full of peculiar charm. 

When I took possession and closed the door, 
dropping my things upon the bed because there 
seemed to be at first sight no other receptacle, 
the room was non-committal. I cannot say it 
stood back and waited ; it was too small to stand 
back. But its effect was one of reserve. What 
was I ? Possible lover ? Or impecunious vaga- 
bond, taking up with a last resort ? If the latter, 
antagonistic and dull, no single charm should I 
see ; but rather I should be smothered at once 
and so gotten out of the way. Fine-spirited little 
room ; excellent mettle there ! I raised my eyes 
to the dangling ropes which controlled the sky- 
light. One strong pull, and half the ceiling 
(which is not saying so much, after all) was lifted 
from above my head. Instantly I turned out the 
gas, and there was the moon looking in on me, 
and the quiet stars and the deep night sky, ex- 
actly as clear and untroubled as if I were viewing 
them from a meadow in the heart of the country. 
[156] 



Cave-Dwellers, or the Hall-Bedroom 

We were friends from that moment, the little 
room and I. 

As I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I 
smiled with satisfaction. Even in the country, 
one cannot do this, unless one is painfully camp- 
ing out. How still it was ! City rooms with 
windows deafen one. Here there was only a 
faint, far sound of the murmur of the streets : the 
blowing of whistles, the ringing of bells, aerial 
noises of the city which must rise high to reach 
me. When I woke in the morning and again 
looked up, a fleecy cloud was sailing across the 
blue. 

It was like a ship's cabin, I decided, as I settled 
down to live — so small, so compact; and that 
murmuring tide beyond and below was the sea. 
Fine ! I set sail on voyages endless as those of 
Ulysses. There is, of course, no farthest port 
which one may not reach in a room like this. 
One may even touch the Happy Isles. One may 
see the great Achilles. 

Sometimes the wind rose and blew a gale, hur- 
tling over the reefed skylight. Then we plunged 
and flew ; the stars went by like sparks of fire, 
the moon reeled giddily. Fog-horns and bell- 
buoys warned us, but we sailed steadily and 
safely. Through the stormy seas we held our 
way to the new port which we never failed to 
make, the new port of To-morrow. 
[157] 



The Edge of the Woods 

Contrary to nautical rules in general, save those 
perhaps of smugglers, all our sailing was done by 
night. By day we anchored, moored fast to, say, 
December 6th, and went soberly to work. The 
sea was still there ; we heard it washing beyond our 
little harbor, but it did not lure us forth. Shut 
in by our narrow boundaries of present time and 
place, we assorted the treasures of our voyages and 
made what use of them we could. 

The first snow surprised me greatly. The rain 
always made a noise and woke me, so that I rose 
and reefed the skylight ; but the snow fell unob- 
trusively on the foot of the bed. It was not until 
it began to melt and drip from the edge of the 
blanket that I stirred into damp consciousness. 
Again I had a feeling that the room was watch- 
ing to see what I would do. It had been a catas- 
trophe like this which had brought the despair of 
the last incumbent to a climax. But mariners 
must have courage and faith, unshaken loyalty. 
I repaired the damage as well as I could, with 
the help of all my towels ; then I moved into the 
driest corner of the bed and went to sleep again. 

In the morning it was apparent to me that I 
was not a mariner any more, at least not for 
to-day. I had gone back several thousand years, 
and was a cave-dweller. A cold, greenish light 
filled my room, struggling through the roof of 
snow over mv head. I wondered how I was 
[ 158 ] 



Cave-Dwellers, or the Hall-Bedroom 

going to get out to hunt and kill my breakfast. 
I thought I had been pretty clever to make this 
snug abode in the heart of the earth, working at 
it from above, shaping and polishing it. How 
symmetrical it was, how safe and cozy and warm ! 
I snuggled down in my pile of skins and took an- 
other nap. 

Adventurer bound on vast voyages into un- 
known seas, primitive man snowed under in the 
early wilderness — can one make me believe that a 
little room which fosters such roles as this in a New 
York boarding-house is not possessed of genius ? 
Country abodes have poetry enough as a matter 
of course. It is nothing to have the imagination 
stirred by a chateau, a rose-covered cottage, a 
picturesque farmhouse. But to lind a hall-bed- 
room — not even that, a closet just evolved into a 
room — bestowing magnificent dreams upon one is 
a thing not lacking in greatness. 

They took me to see the Hotel St. Kegis. 
Sadder and sadder and more depressed I grew, as 
the grandeur unrolled before me, the outrageous 
magnificence. Finally I stopped and fastened 
my eyes on a corner of red carpet. There were 
yards and acres of it besides, but that corner was 
all I wanted. " What is the matter ? " they asked 
me. " Go away," I answered ; "• let me alone. 
This carpet reminds me of my room. I'll stay 
and look at it." 

[159] 



The Edge of the Woods 

Ah, how glad I was to get back ! I ran up the 
stairs, I burst in at the door, I dropped into the 
one chair, I looked up through the open skylight. 
The little room smiled inscrutably, closing its 
small space round me and shutting me in. We 
had a famous voyage that night. But that is our 
own affair. 



[160] 



XVl 
IN PRAISE OF EVERYDAY 

THEEE is one thing better than all the 
holidays, all the high feasts in the 
calendar ; and that is Everyday. This is 
not intended to be a pious assertion, introducing a 
sermon on the beauty of the commonplace ; it 
springs from a conviction that Everyday is the 
natural territory of high romance. 

I think that most mature people who are settled 
in the steady pursuit of a life that really interests 
them have to rouse and brace themselves to face 
a holiday. This is not so dreary and priggish in 
them as it may sound. Their reluctance does not 
commonly spring from a lack of eagerness of dis- 
position, but rather from an intensity of ardor. 
They are so keenly enjoying the progress of their 
closely linked days and weeks that they cannot 
bear to have the sequence interrupted. There is 
something inherently artificial about a holiday. 
It has a flagrantly imposed air, as if it were 
dragged in and compelled to the doubly ungrate- 
ful task of interrupting the course of its antago- 
nist's life and of conferring a new lustre upon it 
by this interruption. Life means work, and work 
must be at a standstill while a holiday intervenes. 
[161] 



The Edge of the Woods 

But life has other meanings besides the domi- 
nant one of work ; and a holiday is no sort of 
occasion for genuine play. It is too perfunctory. 
If play is to have any cordial and graceful signif- 
icance, any essential reality, it must be spontane- 
ous. Holiday excursions are elaborate functions, 
carefully considered and planned, conscientiously 
executed. They have a mechanical aspect of 
extreme felicity ; but the deception is all a matter 
of outward demonstration, it does not even affect 
the surface of the occasion. Holiday crowds have 
anxious faces, not to be compared to the counte- 
nance of whole-souled satisfaction which distin- 
guishes the artisan, smoking on his front steps, or 
digging in his garden, after the day's work is over. 

The world is very perverse, broken, contradic- 
tory ; and the secret of the failure of holidays 
may lie in their inevitable disinclination to fulfill 
our expectations. We ask so much of them in our 
effort to justify them to ourselves that perhaps 
they could not satisfy us if they were ever so 
willing ; but, as a fact, they do not seem to be 
willing at all. They have a traditional leaning 
towards storms and accidents, headaches, sulky 
fires and quitting cooks ; and they get up dramatic 
disasters which may happen any day, but which 
have the signal advantage here of clashing con- 
spicuously with a preconceived idea. A holiday 
can be altogether hateful. 

[162] 



In Praise of Everyday 

It is Everyday which offers us at once the 
pasturing ground and the arena of our legitimate 
hopes and possibilities. Limitless fair field, un- 
fenced, uncharted, there is no calculating the 
great things that it may bestow upon us. 

I have called it the natural territory of high 
romance. That is because romance demands for 
its best productions both an element of the un- 
expected and a sure footing in the commonplace. 
On a holiday nothing is unexpected and nothing is 
commonplace. We are alert in all our senses, 
watching for events, anticipating states of mind. 
We feel it nothing less than our duty to be un- 
commonly thankful on the last Thursday in 
November, superlatively loving on Christmas Day, 
and transcendently sober and thoughtful on New 
Year's Eve. But, as an obvious matter of fact, 
the things to be loving and sober and thoughtful 
about belong to the substantial fabric of life, the 
warp and woof, rather than to the fringe ; and we 
appreciate them best as we go along. 

The time to be really thankful is when a gleam 
surprises me as I bend over my daily task, and I 
look up and see the hills across the valley shining 
in a sudden transfiguration of sunset light. I drop 
my work — or mechanically retain it, too abruptly 
swept out of myself to remember to release it — 
and gaze and gaze, all my being absorbed in the 
startling glory. When, by and by, I return to 
[163] 



The Edge of the Woods 

myself, I fetch a long breath and say as earnestly 
as if no one had ever so spoken before, " What a 
wonderful world this is ! " I may even fail to add, 
" Thank you, God " ; but it is probable that God 
understands. 

Again, I am deeply moved by some deed or 
word — it may be only by some look — on the part 
of a dear friend. I have always loved her, there 
has never been a moment since my first acquaint- 
ance with her when I have not known that life 
was the richer because of her; but I suddenly 
realize just how much she means to me. So I go 
off and buy her a present, all out of season, and 
bestow it upon her with a thrill of enjoyment 
which is one of the most delicious sensations pos- 
sible to man. No Christmas stocking that ever 
bulged knew half that ecstasy. 

Once more : in the presence of some task com- 
pleted, or just as effectively in the ruins of some 
hopeless failure, I suddenly find myself brought 
to a standstill, my gaze turned inward, and my 
thoughts set to interrogate myself. What am I 
about ? What is my real purpose ? What do I 
want to make of my life, and what have I suc- 
ceeded or failed in making hitherto? There 
follows an hour of judgment which anticipates 
and fulfills the mood of New Year's Eve. 

All these great things happen on common days 
— trust them for that! A sunset knows better 
[164] 



In Praise of Everyday 

than to throw itself away on the jaded, dissatisfied, 
critical end of a holiday. A supreme gift keeps 
its celestial skirts free from all taint of obligation. 
A real hour of judgment takes the soul unaware. 
They are also soon over. It needs but a flash to 
illumine the depths of things and to impress their 
aspect and significance on us so that we never 
forget. Prolonged scrutiny has the effect of 
dulling and confusing our vision rather than 
further informing it. It is possible that herein 
lies one of the worst faults of holidays. They are 
too long. A whole day is a long time to devote 
to one idea, to one mental pose. If Government 
set us a Thanksgiving Hour instead of a Thanks- 
giving Day, we might better manage to live up 
to our grateful duty. 

To those who love Everyday, three winter 
months present the best promise of the circHng 
year. They are January, February and March. 
It may be that they are partly indebted for their 
sublime commonplaceness to the perfect orgy of 
holidays which has preceded them. But that is 
quite as it should be ; for that " The Holidays " 
exist. Ah, what a dizzy course ! Since Thanks- 
giving Day, there has been no peace, no satis- 
faction, no solid footing on ordinary ground. 
The turkey bones were hardly made into soup 
(ultimate, restful Lethean soup) before the Salva- 
tion Army kettles appeared in the streets and 
[ 165 ] • 



The Edge of the Woods 

the Christmas war was on. Every day of De- 
cember was a holiday, in the sense of being 
broken out of the usual order and filled with 
a mad special significance. Desperate haste urged 
the hours along, with the inevitable, paradoxical 
result that they were as slow as they were short, 
and hung around, lagging intolerably, after they 
were supposed to be gone. There was no escaping 
the contagion of the unusual. One might lurk in 
one's chamber, soliciting the sweet significance, 
the deep revelation of the dear Everyday ; there 
was no Everyday any more, it had been put to 
flight. Society suffers together ; when one mem- 
ber goes Christmas shopping, the rest may as 
well come along too, for if they stay at home, 
their thoughts, their reading, their very dreams 
will be tinged with toy soldiers and lace handker- 
chiefs. 

December is a finely climactic month. It rises 
steadily to the height of its twenty-fifth day, 
hangs there a moment, drops a little, re-gathers 
itself, and ends triumphantly on a New Year's 
note. 

Then — ah ! then, as one hangs poised on the 
midnight hour of January first, one seems to 
listen to an audible sound. Not the all-too- 
audible sound of the previous midnight, but a vast 
murmur, an undertone, as of an ocean turning to 
come into its own again. It is steady, mono to- 
[166] 



In Praise of Everyday 

nous, reassuring ; there is the deep note of eternity 
in it, the restful suggestion of infinite opportunity. 
Everyday is coming back to heal and bless us and 
set us free of the universe once more. When 
January second dawns, the world settles down, 
with a sigh of relief, to common living. 

What a comfort it is to let oneself go, to stop 
shooting wildly at shifting, immediate targets 
and again to take careful, deliberate aim at the 
unique goal which one has long since set up on 
the far horizon ! Of course the most of one's 
arrows fall short, but that does not matter ; it is 
the best blessing of Everyday that its tolerant 
spaces allow ample scope for failure and trying 
over again. If one does not succeed to-day, to- 
morrow is coming, precisely as ready and open as 
to-day and perhaps more favorable in its occult in- 
fluences. For there is this also about Everyday, 
that it is not the mere monotonous drone that it 
appears on the surface. It loves variety as well 
as any holiday, and carefully sees to it that its 
circumstances are never the same at the rising of 
the sun as at the previous setting. But it 
depends on subtler methods for achieving dis- 
tinction than does the holiday. Its processes of 
change are gradual, finely hidden ; one has to go 
out and try the mood of each new day before 
one can understand it. In a sense, moreover, it is 
really that which it appears — eternally the same. 
[ 167 ] 



The Edge of the Woods 

The same unbroken time stream flows on through 
all the days and weeks, through all the ages ; 
and it is when we realize this uniformity and 
give ourselves over to it that we are most at ease 
and most effective. But, nevertheless, we need 
not expect that, in the whole course of the longest 
life, any day will repeat another ; for no stream 
returns on itself, and waters change their hue and 
motion from field to field. 

Finely tempered, clever, wise. Everyday knows 
how to surprise us without appearing to do so. It 
lets us surprise ourselves — which is of course the 
superlative kind of revelation. In its non-com- 
mittal fashion it produces romantic results which 
entirely put to shame the blatant situations of 
holidays. It is always on a common Monday 
afternoon and always in disguise that the Fairy 
Prince rides in. But one has to be on the alert, 
for Fairy Princes ride just as nimbly out of the 
east as out of the west and wear rags quite 
as comfortably as a silken cloak. Everyday is 
thus really proved much more stimulating than a 
holiday. It puts us on our mettle ; and, just 
as we may expect everything of it, so it expects 
everything of us. JSTot one of Emerson's " Days " 
was a holiday. 

Everyday is at its best in the winter, and that 
is why I have named the first three months of 
the year as its Saturnia regna. Spring and 
[168] 



In Praise of Everyday 

summer and autumn present ample spaces, but 
they are all more or less restless seasons, and 
our vacation system impinges on them. Here 
again society suffers — or rejoices— together. The 
most inveterate stay-at-home is picked out of his 
ruts and consigned to an involuntary change by 
the mere fact that his neighbors have gone away 
and left him. The irregular coming and going of 
its members keeps most communities in a state of 
disorganization from May to November. But in 
winter, life is as established as it ever succeeds 
in becoming on this mutable planet ; it is turned 
inward, concentrated, shorn of many of the dis- 
tractions of the outer world. It can give itself 
wholly to the fashioning of its purpose. 

That is the crowning significance of Everyday, 
its one supreme gift to us : it lends itself utterly 
to our work. IS'o wonder we prize it, then ! For 
the joy of steady, unhurried work is avowedly 
the best bliss of life. 



[169] 



XYII 
OPTIMIST'S DAY 

THEKE is one day of the year which 
deserves celebration, not because of the 
merits of any great man whose birth or 
death it commemorates, not because of any nota- 
ble event then occurring ; but simply because 
it is what it is : the twenty-first of December. 

" But that is the shortest day in the year," 
cries some one, and looks depressed. 

Precisely. The very reason. 

Is it not worth everything to have got to the 
bottom at last ? We have been going downward 
so long, — ever since, months ago, in the midst of 
the springing June, when life stood at its best, 
when birds were singing and grass was deep, 
there came the fatal turn. There was no darken- 
ing change apparent on that long, fair day ; but 
we knew, and sighed. The twenty-first of June 
might be called Pessimist's Day. 

All too soon the event proved the fear. The 
bobolinks stopped singing. The grass was cut, 
the hay gathered in, nests w^ere emptied of their 
broods, and the year settled down into sober 
middle-age, prophetic of graver things. Alas ! 
before long we were lighting the lamps and aban- 
[170] 



Optimist's Day 



doning the piazza. Alas ! presently the sweet- 
william was past, and the tiger lily and the Per- 
sian lilac buried once more in the charitable earth 
the summer warfare which they wage in all well- 
ordered New England gardens. Then came the 
early frosts, and the turning leaves, and the level 
line of advancing night on the face of the eastern 
mountain in the midst of the afternoon. After 
that, the " wild west w^ind," and the flying leaves, 
and the dark and solemn mountains, and no after- 
noon at all. 

So the gradual season declined, till the tardy 
sun at last came all too late upon an outstripping 
world which could no longer wait for it ; and, 
finding mankind at breakfast and the day's ^vork 
well under way, sadly concluded that, after all, it 
formed no indispensable adjunct to the earth, and, 
after wandering aimlessly for a few minutes about 
a small southern section of the sky, with nothing 
at all to do, dropped out of sight again. 

We have come a dim, sad way. 

But now ! With what a long breath ^ve greet 
the twenty-first of December. It has in it all the 
promise of the still so distant summer. It has 
the song of thrushes and the fragrance of hepati- 
cas. It gives us back our green grass, our leaves, 
and our running brooks. All we have to do is to 
wait a little and we shall see. It may be that 
even to-morrow we shall be saying to one an- 
[171] 



The Edge of the Woods 

other, " Don't you notice how much longer the 
days are growing ? See, the lamp isn't lighted 
yet." And surely within the week, surely by 
Christmas Day, the improvement will be marked. 
An added lustre comes into the sky, the sun 
plucks up heart and returns from the south, re- 
suming his martial air. There is no more to 
dread, for the worst is over, the better begins, the 
best follows hard behind. Most beautiful, joyous 
day! 

At this point, perhaps, some gentle reader, who 
has already drawn in his breath half a dozen 
times, impatient to speak, will no longer be 
denied. "When the days begin to lengthen, 
then the cold begins to strengthen," he quotes 
impressively. 

Yes, we had not forgotten the wise old adage. 
But there are two sides to wisdom as to every- 
thing. " When the cold begins to strengthen, 
then the days begin to lengthen " sounds just as 
sententious, rhymes just as well, runs as euphoni- 
ously. Why should we not adopt the inverted 
rendering ? It has the advantage of meaning 
much, whereas the time-honored version stands 
for no more use in the world than Poe's raven, 
still foreboding. Will it never cease to be the 
admired part of wisdom to forebode ? 

There is no arrangement of Providence more 
skillful, more subtly significant than this of the 
[172] 



Optimist's Day- 



seasons. In the very heart of the winter, nay, 
before it is well under way, when the worst of 
the cold is yet before us, comes the happy turning 
point. Though bound to suffer still, we shall 
henceforth be going up, up, ever up; and the 
lengthening days proclaim the fact. How shall 
we be despondent any more ? 

As for Pessimist's Day, it is there of course, if 
any one wants to avail himself of it. There is 
never any use in trying to deny the existence of 
the world's dark side. But a Pessimist's Day set 
in the midst of waving grass and flowers, of blue 
sky, golden sunlight, fragrance, warmth, song, 
joy, finds itself in a rather humorous situation. 
A man would have to be very determined (or 
have eaten too many strawberries) to be seriously 
down-hearted on the twenty -first of June. 

Hail, then. Optimist's Day, coming now to 
cheer us ! Out of its cold and darkness, out of 
its wintry gloom, its incredibly short hours, we 
shall snatch true heart's content. What if we do 
have to light the lamp at 4 p. m. ? To-morrow 
we may light it at 4 : 01. 



[173] 



XYIII 
THANK TIME! 

IT is to the credit of people that they are, for 
the most part, very glib in expressions 
of gratitude. " Thank goodness ! " " Thank 
heaven!" Those phrases may not be very 
thoughtfully uttered, but they indicate a habit of 
mind which is perhaps all the more profound for 
its careless, half-unconscious instinctiveness. We 
all of us recognize the workings of a Power out- 
side ourselves ; and when it blesses us, we thank 
it gaily. 

But we are rather vague in our choice of epi- 
thets to designate this Power. " Goodness " and 
" heaven " are too universal ; they do not discrim- 
inate any particular function by which we have 
been helped. Who ever heard of the expression, 
" Thank time ! " ? Yet who, when he stops to 
think, does not know that time has benefited him 
more than most other agencies ? 

A pure illusion ! Of course. Saint Augustine 
proved that once for all in his desperate, longing, 
bewildered effort to grasp it and make it real. 
There is no past — since it is dead ; there is no 
present — it slips from beneath the swiftest touch ; 
there is no future — for it is yet unborn and may 
[174] 



Thank Time ! 



never come to be. How, then, can there be any 
tune, if its component parts are naught ? " And 
yet, Lord, we perceive intervals of times, and 
compare them . . . and we talk of time, and 
time, and times, and times." To be sure we do. 
Even in Saint Augustine's day it was no new feat 
for human nature to take resolute, confident 
refuge in that which it knew to be but an illu- 
sion. 

But it was not on the abstract nature of time, 
or on its figurative meaning that I sat down to 
meditate. It was to time as a definite, accepted 
fact in life that I meant to pay homage. Most 
blessed influence ! there is almost nothing that it 
will not do for us, if we will but let it. Nay, in 
the long run, whether we let it or not ; for time 
is one of God's greater processes, one of His 
strongest angels, who cannot defer to our weak- 
ness forever, but must help us in spite of our- 
selves, if that is the only way open. 

We are sometimes very perverse and stupid in 
our resistance to this benefaction. We talk of 
loyalty, faithfulness to the past, and what not. 
As if there were any loyalty to be compared to 
loyalty to the future ! Our wounds must heal, 
that we may go on living ; our sorrows must turn 
into deeper joys, that the life of the universe may 
be enriched through us. Yet often we think 
shame to have this so. We tear our wounds open 
[175] 



The Edge of the Woods 

again, we gaze persistently into the past, we cling 
to the shadow of that which has vanished, and 
think we are doing well. Blind generation ! Do 
we not know that the substance of all things, 
even of the dear past, lies still beyond us, ahead 
of us, in that realm of full consciousness and un- 
derstanding towards which we are hastening? 
Life loses nothing. A beloved friend gone from 
the present is also snatched out of the past and 
set down before us in the uncalculable future. It 
is there that we shall find him again. Why do 
we tarry ? Oh, let us make speed ! Time is here, 
ready to help us. 

So in bereavement ; and so also in failure and 
disappointment. There is something sublime 
about the way in which the sun continues serenely 
to rise on our most disgraceful mischances, offer- 
ing us yet another day, precisely as open and 
plastic as that which we misused so forlornly. 
Kather more plastic, in fact, if we only have the 
wit to perceive it ; for wisdom is the offspring of 
failure, and wisdom makes plastic the universe. 
We still have " all the time there is " to make 
good our mistakes. 

As for our joys and triumphs, there is nothing 
which tests them like time — proving and estab- 
lishing some, undermining others until they 
crumble slowly away and are no more. A stern 
probation? If it were so, it would still be all 
[176] 



Thank Time 



desirable; for truth is the only possible resting 
place for the human spirit. But it is not stern. 
Time's methods are gentle, merciful ; it has a way 
of wooing illusions from us which is beyond all 
comparison kind and clever ; we wake up some 
morning and find them gone, that is all there is to 
the matter. Of course, by and by, if we have 
any insight at all, we become aware of the gradual 
processes of the years at work in us, and we can 
watch them — but always with grateful, and some- 
times amused, acquiescence, never with any pain. 
Time has no will to hurt any creature, only to 
bless us and guide our feet into the way of peace. 

It is a most generous creature itself, this ex- 
cellent time — fine, open-handed, magnanimous. 
There is hardly another blessing of life which is 
so free with us. In matters of friendship, relig- 
ion, beauty, music, books, we can take no more 
than we consciously will, we must volunteer our 
own acceptance. Even the sun cannot gladden us 
unless we choose. But time does not measure its 
gifts by our will ; it is even so lavish that when 
we are thinking about it least, then most it is 
active in our behalf. Steadily, smoothly, it bears 
us along, away from our incompleteness and pain, 
towards that fulfillment of all things which is the 
goal of the universe. 

All the symbols of time are dear to a devout 
time lover : the hour-glass, the scythe, the river, 
[177] 



The Edge of the Woods 

even the skull. To some hearts there is magic in 
the very look of an old date. Any old date. 
Kot, to be sure, July 4, 1776 — sl special signifi- 
cance interferes with the working of the spell — 
but a chance date at the head of a letter : May 
16, 1810 ; October 2, 1843. The curious thrill 
which springs from the touch of these other days 
and years is hard to track down and analyze for 
the benefit of the incredulous, but is abounding 
in comfort and peace to those who understand. 
August 18, 1642 : time was graciously busy then, 
too, some one was better off on that day than on 
December 21, 1641, the world was farther along 
towards its one, far-off, divine event than on Sep- 
tember 2, 1630. How very much farther along it 
is now, thank heaven, thank time ! 

The dates of the future are quite as potent in 
satisfaction as those of the past ; only of course 
we see them less often. They lend a glamour to 
money-bonds and securities. A note which ma- 
tures on February 2, 1925 — what a lien on the 
future that gives, what a pull out of the past ! As 
for " A Table to Find Easter Day " in the front 
of the Book of Common Prayer, 1 would com- 
mend that to the perusal of all restless spirits. 
"From the year of our Lord, 1786, to the year of 
our Lord 2013 — there is scope enough for the most 
eager imagination ! March 31, 2013 — will that 
day ever reallv dawn as a sober matter-of-course, 
[ 178 ] 



Thank Time! 



as the mere ordinary change of yet another to- 
morrow into to-day ? Will that Easter service be 
celebrated, with the familiar early spring flowers 
and with the unfamiliar, entirely unimaginable 
spring bonnets of the second decade of twenty- 
first century fashion ? 

Ah, well ! we shall none of us be there to see ; 
we shall all have ended our course by that time^ 
have yielded our hopes and fears and desires, our 
manifold, unremitting struggles, into the merciful 
hands of Death, have proved that mysterious 
" beyond " which torments us so now with vain 
speculation, have won our way, if not entirely 
back to God, at least nearer Him by a whole life- 
time. We shall none of us celebrate that earthly 
Easter, thank heaven, thank time ! A sad con- 
gratulation ? IS'o. Though life is not precisely a 
merry-go-round for any one of us. 

Akin to the love of dates is the satisfaction 
which almost everybody takes in the swift flight 
of days and weeks. We do not often admit this 
pleasure ; we are accustomed to fetch a sigh and 
shake our heads when we pull ourselves up and 
say, " What ! another week gone already ? How 
time does fly ! " But our tones betray us, felici- 
tation lurks deep in them. If one would hear 
real trouble, he must hark to the accents of wor- 
ried perplexity in which, on occasion, a man con- 
fesses, " Last Sunday seems very long ago ; I seem 
[179] 



The Edge of the Woods 

to have been here a month." Nor, I protest, has 
the reason for this anything to do with the history 
of the intervening week. In fact, the verdict is 
common that variety and striking interest of occu- 
pation retard time, while monotony accelerates it. 
Ask the prisoner in his cell; ask the traveller 
abroad. The root of the matter seems to be just 
that it is inherently grateful to our human sense 
to feel time speeding with us. 

I have recommended the Easter Day table ; but 
I would more heartily still recommend to all bur- 
dened spirits the use of a current calendar. A 
block calendar, with a leaf to be torn off every 
day and thrown into the waste basket. There is 
an immense satisfaction, relief, in that simple, 
daily gesture of abandonment. So! one more 
day is gone ; there it lies, crumpled and empty as 
an autumn leaf, past all recovery. And here is 
another day ; let us make haste to live it to the 
full. 

I repeat that this is not a sad subject, except as 
all human subjects are more or less sad. There is 
always a note of pain in incompleteness. But the 
note of hope is there too of course, the overtone 
of promise. The significance of incompleteness 
is that it implies fulfillment. It is certainly not 
for nothing that we have this great need of haste 
in our blood, this impatience of hesitation and 
failure and delay. We have come near enough to 
[180] 



Thank Time! 



the goal of the universe to glimpse it dimly from 
afar ; and its glory awakes such a longing in us 
that we shake off the patience of nature, the slow 
content of the groping ages. It is all we can do 
not to shake off time too, and leap out at once 
across the void to clasp our heart's desire. 

Good time, our best friend — a pretty way that 
would be to treat him ! And a dreary mistake 
too. For, after all, the process of growth in the 
world remains much the same as ever — gradual, 
patient ; we must still go slowly if we expect to 
arrive. The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be taken 
by violence, but only by development, and that is 
the work of time. 

One wonders if there will be no time beyond, 
and if we shall not miss it. JSTo cycle-glasses, no 
heavenly calendars, bearing angelic quotations 
(Shakespeare and Wordsworth must have ex- 
pressed a great man}^ wonderful thoughts since 
they died), no JSTew JEon Days ? Perhaps, since 
time dies with us, it will also rise with us in its 
own celestial body ; and we shall awake to find 
it waiting to lead us as surely, as gently as hereto- 
fore. The hope is comforting. 



[181] 



XIX 

WAIT 

IN all our language there is no wiser and 
kinder word than Wait. Nor is there any 
whose perfect counsel is more likely to be 
spurned by our impatient hearts. This is natural 
enough. Wanting is an immediate issue, and no- 
body concerns himself very keenly about a desire 
which he thinks he may wish to gratify in a year 
or two. Our present need makes our present lack, 
and we hurry to supply it. But over and over and 
over again we have to learn that the best things 
come slowly ; that the Kingdom of Heaven will 
not be taken by force, in an hour ; and that, if we 
really want, we must wait — then we shall surely 
have. 

The two words are almost identical. There is 
only a small but significant difference in one 
letter, substituting for the indefinite n the pur- 
poseful ^ of a human will which addresses itself to 
attainment. One may want and go on wanting 
forever ; but waiting implies a far end. 

It is not a passive, resigned state, then, but one 
of intensest activity ; it makes no confession of 
[182] 



Wait 

lukewarmness, but gives proof of desire too strong 
to put up with any half-way measures, any incom- 
plete fulfillment. A man who is willing to wait 
really wants, and proves his worthiness. 

Hard? It is bitterly hard. If it were not, 
there would be no meaning in it. All the ages 
acknowledge the heart-sickness of hope deferred. 
But hoping is different from waiting ; much more 
clamorous, but not so sure. Hope is a volatile 
spirit, always returning because it is always de- 
parting. The angel of Waiting abides with us 
and fijj:es its eyes, not on the next meadow, but on 
the mountain top. That a process is hard should 
be no reason for complaint on our part, since the 
hardest things are ever most blessed to the valiant 
soul. But there is in waiting an ultimate depth 
of peace which robs the condition of half its 
pain and all its restlessness. Nay, it may even 
come to confer upon us a divine happiness. What 
does God do — and all the angels — but wait 
eternally ? 

It is doubtless true that what we wait for, that 
we shall surely have. It is also true that what 
we wait to be rid of, that we shall surely lose. 
Blessed, blessed working of time (strong, com- 
passionate angel Time !) to heal all bruises, close 
all wounds, turn all things into good ! William 
Bowles has a beautiful sonnet, although a sad 
one, on this subject : 

[183] 



The Edge of the Woods 

*^ O Time, who know^st a lenient hand to lay 
Softest on sorrow's wound and slowly thence 
(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense) 
The faint pang stealest unperceived away." 

If we could only remember that this must 
surely happen to us, that all our past life must 
seem good, we might save ourselves — but per- 
haps, after all, it is well not to save ourselves. 
How should we ever know anything if we did 
not suffer ? At least, however, we might bend an 
ear to an inner singing beneath our tears, a 
voice which says patiently, constantly, " Wait. 
Wait — wait — wait. ' ' 

Wait, how long, then ? Well, a lifetime is 
a little matter, hardly a beginning towards the 
most important things. Until the earth and 
planets cool might be a pretty period, or until the 
sun goes out, or until a new one kindles. But 
limitations are no business of the really waiting 
soul. Wait as long as God waits; that is the 
best decision. 



[184] 



XX 

PROCRASTINATION 

I THINK I believe in a certain amount of 
thoughtful procrastination. Because, sooner 
or later, the mood comes around for every 
sort of thing, and then is the time to work. 

About once in six weeks it happens that I 
really want to sew. IS^ot merely am able to 
tolerate the idea, not even am willing, but truly 
prefer the occupation to any other. Then I get 
my work-basket, open the drawer where garments 
have been systematically accumulating against this 
festal hour, and happily start in. In my low 
sewing-chair (reading-chair yesterday) beside the 
open window I sit and taste true heart's content. 
My needle catches the beat of my pulse, the 
swing of my thoughts ; the work falls from my 
hands like magic ; the whole of my nature lends 
itself to the task which it has chosen. I am 
living as fully and deeply now as I was when I 
climbed the autumn hill day before yesterday, 
or when, yesterday, I sat down to reread King 
Lear. 

That sort of experience is worth while. Sup- 
pose now I had tamely obeyed the mandate of 
convention and had darned my stockings as they 
[185] 



The Edge of the Woods 

came along, every Saturday morning. Not only 
should I have undergone a weekly hour of irritating 
constraint ; but I should also have missed a fine 
flowering of pleasure. When the darning mood 
arrived — on Wednesday, let us say — there would 
have been no stockings to meet it, and my spirit 
would have suffered lack. Talk not of the com- 
pensation of fancy-work ! Moods demand satis- 
faction, not compensation. When they ask for 
bread — and stockings, will one give them cake — 
and doilies ? 

It is even so with the writing of letters. Never 
mind, let them accumulate till the pigeonhole is 
full. To make a task of intercourse, to compel 
the expression of love, is an insult to friendship. 
How coldly do the phrases fall from an unwilling 
pen ! Better a year of silence. Silence is not 
unloving, silence is very good. But, on the other 
hand, silence is nothing compared with the glow- 
ing outgo of life when some day the pen leaps up 
of its own accord and the letter falls from it, 
vibrant with feeling, straight from the very heart. 
That is intercourse; that is a letter, fit for the 
king, your friend. Trust him to prefer to wait for 
one such letter in six months than to receive a 
dozen epistles perfunctorily contrived. 

Thoughtful procrastination, I said, not lazy 
procrastination. The mind must be kept always 
active, alert, ready for the next chance. Great 
[186] 



Procrastination 



moments demand an earnest response ; they may 
all too easily be missed by a sluggish inapprehen- 
sion. Get out of the way of expecting them, 
settle back into inaction, and your life will be 
commonplace enough. Moreover, your stockings 
will never be darned, which is, on the whole, a 
pity. But study the signs of the times of your 
spirit, quicken your sense to anticipate, and great 
moments may come every day. 

I have even known men to enjoy old age. 
But they went through a deal of procrastination 
lii"st. 

We shall probably all enjoy heaven. 



[187] 



XXI 
ENCORE 

WHAT a curious trick of human nature 
it is to think that one very much wants 
a thing which one really does not want 
at all ! 

I reflect on this mystery every time I come to 
myself at the end of a concert — the excellent, 
satisfactory end which a good concert knows how 
to make and which is as much a part of the pro- 
gram as the symphony — and hear people murmur- 
ing on every hand, " Oh ! wasn't that beautiful ? 
Oh ! don't you wish that we could hear it right 
over again, straight through from the beginning ? " 
Nor is it a matter of hearing only which I experi- 
ence ; I myself give utterance freely : " Yes, in- 
deed ; if we only could ! " with such a fervor of 
assent that I deceive myself as well as every one 
else. 

Why do I do this ? Why do we all so delude 
ourselves ? We know perfectly well that it is one 
of the great laws of life that immediate repetition 
spoils almost any pleasure, that nothing would 
really afflict us more than to hear that concert 
"right over again, straight through from the 
beginning." Yet observe us. Erect in our seats, 
[ 188 ] 



Encore 



we wave our handkerchiefs, clap our hands, storm 
the weary musicians with an applause which is 
not all gratitude but which demands further 
favors at once. 

It is interesting to observe the deportment of 
these musicians under stress of our importunity. 
They all know that encores are a mistake — trust 
them for that. Sometimes they hold to the 
knowledge serenely, bowing and bowing (since 
they are human, they doubtless enjoy the tribute 
of applause enough to pay for the fatigue which 
it entails on them), but steadfastly refusing the 
least note of concession to the multitude. That is 
fine ; I approve it, even though I may be splitting 
my gloves with entreaty. Sometimes, worn out, 
they capitulate, shrugging their shoulders and smil- 
ing with an air of mingled disgust and toleration 
which is very funny, and, returning to their in- 
struments, play — not a genuine encore, but some- 
thing else, not down on the program. That is not 
very bad, though it never is very good. It 
creates a subdued confusion of people comparing 
notes all over the house — " That's Chopin " ; 
" Oh, no, it's that charming little thing of 
Grieg's, don't you recognize it ? " — and it has 
an air of duty and dispatch which injures it. 
But the genuine encore, the repetition of the last 
all too fondly admired concert number, is the 
great and deplorable insult to art and com- 
[189] 



The Edge of the Woods 

mon sense. It is hard to see how a musician 
can bring himself to commit such a crime. No 
one enjoys it. The strains, which ravished five 
minutes ago, cloy now, or irritate, or simply 
bore ; a joy, which might have remained a dear 
memory, is eclipsed and extinguished. Folly of 
men ! The angels must weep at the beautiful 
things which we spoil for ourselves. 

The same perversity holds true in the reading 
of books. One suddenly comes upon a great 
passage, a splendid paragraph. What an experi- 
ence ! It takes the breath, dazzles the heart. 
One lets oneself go with the sweep of the lines, 
one catches the glow of the thought and thrills to 
the beauty of its fit expression, one glories, re- 
joices ; then one reaches the end of the page and 
pauses, lifting or closing the eyes. Now that 
very pause is the fine flower of the poet's utter- 
ance ; it is expressly designed to convey tran- 
scendent things to the reader. But wisdom and 
self-control are needed to hold the vision true. If 
the reader says to himself, " That's a noble pas- 
sage ; I must read it right over again," and suits 
the action to the word, the great work is undone. 
All the glow and power escape from the lines 
when they are closely scrutinized, the hovering 
significance fades, the beauty resolves itself into 
mere rhyme and metre. The only way to retain 
the glory of a splendid page is to push on, reso- 
[190] 



Encore 



lutely forbearing to cast so much as one glance 
behind. 

In the matter of the seasons, too, how foolish 
people are ! My summer home is in the northern 
part of JSTew England, where the spring comes very 
late. I am apt to return to it early in May, and 
always have the experience of finding myself set 
back two or three weeks in the year's develop- 
ment. I do not like this. It disconcerts me, 
gives me a rude jog which is not in harmony 
with the smooth lapse of time. But never yet 
have I failed to be congratulated by somebody 
when I have taken my northward departure: 
" You lucky person to have the spring all over 
again ! " As if I wanted spring over again ! 
What ! to have made all that progress, achieved 
all that serene unfolding, flowered and ripened to 
that extent, and then to be pulled up short and 
haled back to bleak and snowy beginnings — how 
discouraging ! It is true that the early spring is 
the most exquisite phase of the year, that the 
beauty of early summer cannot compare with it ; 
but, once having had the poignant rapture, the 
spirit finds itself set to the tune of repose and 
maturity. A thrill repeated in the wrong place 
hurts. 

That use of the word rapture reminds me of 
Browning's thrush. But I wonder if the poet, 
being pinned down to a final conviction, would 
[191] 



The Edge of the Woods 

have consistently defended the wisdom of his bird. 
Poets say so many things in so many different 
moods. Anyway, what kind of a thrush was it 
that sang his song twice over ? Not the thrush 
that lives in my woods ; he never repeats himself. 
It is undoubtedly true that he utters the same 
notes many times in the course of one woodland 
afternoon ; but he combines them so differently 
that he always seems to be saying something en- 
tirely new. Even when he recurs to a whole 
strain, it is with no effect of repetition, but swing- 
ing around to it through such a sequence of modu- 
lations and changes of key that it falls on the ear 
with a fresh suggestion. He is a wise thrush. 

There is another poet, William Blake, one of 
whose stanzas I find myself quoting so often that 
I think I must regard it as expressing a very pro- 
found philosophy of life : 

** He who bends to himself a joy 
Does the winged life destroy ; 
But he who kisses the joy as it flies, 
Lives in eternity's sunrise." 

It is the last line that captivates me. Only 
four words. Yet one can reflect on them end- 
lessly, drawing wisdom and comfort and strength 
from them ; one can set sail on them, use them as 
wings, direct them to any vast purpose one will ; 
there is no exhausting them. They contain noth- 
[192] 



Encore 



ing less than the whole of man's immortality. 
Eternity's sunrise ! Thus we stand always at the 
beginning of new things, the old put away behind 
us, not forgotten, but merged in general clouds of 
glory. Thus there are always fresh chances be- 
fore us, strange and surprising enough sometimes, 
but all the better for that. Thus, in one aspect, 
we are always young, old and experienced though 
we may sanely desire that life shall make us on 
the whole. 

Good life ! After all, we are trying to reckon 
without our host in this discussion — our host or 
our warder, our teacher, our guide, just as we 
choose to name it. Life is a great deal wiser 
than we are and it sees to it that the great con- 
cerns of our experience are guarded from our 
meddlesome fingers. It does not precisely limit 
us to one prayer in a lifetime, one mountain rap- 
ture, one friendly contact of soul with soul, one 
morning's ardent work. Such restriction would 
be hard lines. The unique delight would scarcely 
be worth the subsequent price of emptiness and 
longing which we should have to pay for it. But, 
in a hundred thousand prayers, no two strike out 
the same path to heaven ; no familiar mountain 
ever touches the spirit twice in the same way. 
We may play with trivial issues, trivial encores we 
may achieve, if we are so foolish ; but the real 
things come and go as they will. 
[193] 



XXII 
THE PERIL OF FRIENDSHIP 

MUCH has lately (and formerly also) 
been written on the subject of Friend- 
ship. The repetition is natural, for no 
more important matter concerns any of us. But 
in almost all the dissertations, the stress has fallen 
on the solidity of the relation, its ever-enduring- 
ness ; so that, as one reads the essays and poems, 
one seems to conceive of the beautiful office as a 
stout iron rod, change-defying. Now an iron rod 
has excellent uses, but — it is heavy, and some- 
times it rusts. I should like, if I may, to dwell 
for a little on the thought of the vanishing nature 
of friendship, its precious frailness and peril. 

There is nothing in all the world so good, and 
nothing so uncertain. No stout iron rod, no im- 
mutable substance, it is rather a vital relation, a 
quivering contact, flying and sweet as the inter- 
course between two wayward clouds, two stars, 
two hills bound by a rainbow. One can no more 
touch it and say, " It is there," than one can bind 
the wind. Yet the whole life bends before it. 

We all of us recognize this fragility in the early 
days of a friendship, those days which are so often 
the best because the most quick, most aware. 
[194] 



The Peril of Friendship 

We go carefully, tenderly, holding the breath : is 
the spell on now, or ofi ? And when, instead of 
the answering touch backwards and forwards 
which we had desired, there is silence and dis- 
tance, we are not annoyed, hardly even surprised. 
Very well, bide the time, it will come again, the 
sovereign happy moment which gives my new 
friend to me. Music must have intervals, and 
poems must have caesuras. 

What stupid creatures we are, to be sure, that 
we give all our wisdom to that which is new, and 
allow custom to blunt our perceptions and de- 
grade us from our best selves ! For it is our best 
selves which we give these new friends, our most 
earnest, alive, and unselfish intentions. When, 
all too soon, we begin to expect and demand 
favors, to complain of neglect, to deal in re- 
proaches, we fall from our high estate and do not 
deserve best boons. I would proffer it as an 
axiom that no one ever lost a friend who did not 
deserve to lose him. 

Patience, patience, and good humor, and infi- 
nite expectation — which is quite a different thing 
from definite expectation — these are the traits 
which friendship needs for its faithful service. 
One must stand open to all the quarters of heaven 
that one's friend may enter by any door, at any 
time of day. How delightful, when one has been 
used to seeing him walk up the front steps, to 
[195] 



rmm 



The Edge of the Woods 

miss him here for a day or two, and then all of a 
sudden to find him in the kitchen pantry ! The 
novel approach gives a new point of view, and 
one starts one's friendship all over again, with 
cookies as a foundation. 

I would endeavor to take my friend as the good 
Lord made him, and not attempt to alter him. I 
would help him to live up to his best and to work 
out his soul's salvation, but always along the lines 
of his own nature, not mine. Why do I lovfe him 
if not because he is just himself ? Hands off! If 
I should uproot that rather deplorable reckless- 
ness, I might harm the splendid generosity which 
grows on the same stem ; if I laid hold upon the 
pride, I should also have to handle the integrity. 
No, touch him not. I like him tangled up just as 
he is, drawing nutriment from the whole earth, 
climbing up to the light and blooming in a beau- 
tiful flower of love which I may or may not pick, 
as chance and the seasons conspire. 

There is in the affairs of friendship a silent 
sense of honor which is more high and delicate 
than anything on earth. We must hold ourselves 
true to our hints and inferences, knowing that in 
them we commit ourselves more vitally than in 
spoken words. All the world can judge and 
condemn a broken promise, but only one friendly 
heart understands the perfidy of a broken hint. 
What the speaking eye says to the friend in 
[196] 



The Peril of Friendship 

moments when the spell is on and the intercourse 
runs warm, let the life loyally answer for. 

Trust is, after all, the one great quality without 
which no friendship is possible. The kind of trust 
which one gives the sun that, though he hasten 
away in the west, he will surely come back to- 
morrow, and that, meantime, he is intent on 
necessary errands ; that, though he lurks in the 
clouds to-day, he will sooner or later shine out 
again, the same, good, genial sun. The kind of 
trust which one gives the rain and the flowers and 
the dew. These are all more unstable and vanish- 
ing than the iron rod on which one may lean ; but 
long after the rod is rusted and cast aside, the sun 
will continue to cross the sky, and the rain and the 
dew to fall. 

It therefore appears, in the last resort, that 
frailty may have a greater strength than solidity, 
and that the unstable things of life are the most 
persistent. That which vanishes may return over 
and over and over again through all eternity; 
whereas that which remains and changes not 
has no choice but to wear out. Boundless the 
hope of an unfettered friendship — sweet Ariel 
sprite of a thing ! To-day or to-morrow it may 
come. No ? Well, next week or next year. 

Careful, then, though we surely must be in all 
our friendly dealings, we need not be too anxious. 
In fact, it is probably never wise to be anxious at 
[197] 



■^Mjig— «*' , « . i ^ 'tf n il *•< " ^^ i «% »— wiO W Qii l fc uTU W Wt l l.'B ti M 



The Edge of the Woods 

all. Anxiety, caution, and worry corrode and 
belittle the heart, so that the vision becomes 
distorted, and we know not what we do. Ariel 
flees the soul that fusses, vexed and blindly 
troubled. Life asks high-handed daring of us. 
Be not afraid. These forces are spun out of the 
elemental laws which govern the universe ; they 
can stand your hardihood. What hardihood ? 
Even the courage to drop your dear friendship the 
minute its sweet bells jangle, to leave it, flee from 
it, hasten away to the uttermost parts of the earth, 
not saying one word or looking back. In this 
flight and silence lies the one chance of ultimate 
salvation. Oh, if people would not talk so much, 
nor demand such explanations ! I have known 
more friendships ruined through well-meant words 
than through any other folly. 

Friend, whom I love, I do not know if, meeting 
you to-day, I should find you loving or not. But 
you have loved me, twice, thrice, many times, 
thank God ! Some day again — who knows ? 
Meantime, my heart stands wide to you. And in 
a heart which stands wide are there not the wind 
and the sun ? 



[198] 



o 



XXIII 
THE ULTIMATE HARE 

UIET people, of a meditative turn of mind, 
have a sorry time of it nowadays with 
their more active comrades. Probably 
this~has always been true ; it is part of activity's 
nature to be impatient with quiescence. But it 
certainly does seem as if there had never been quite 
such an active age as this since the world began. 

The state of affairs is all right ; the quiet person 
asks nothing better than that there shall be a 
great deal going on around him to furnish him 
material for his meditations. The quieter and 
more thoughtful he is, the more likely he is to be 
found haunting Broadway or Wall Street. But the 
trouble begins when he is pulled up short in the 
midst of his unhurried speculations and is accused 
of gross negligence because he does not take his 
turn at keenly bestirring himself. 

Ignorance is the offensive word rather than 
negligence — though the two go together tradi- 
tionally. The quiet person can stand it to be told 
that he is neglecting his duty (almost any one can 
stand that) ; but it pains and bewilders him to be 
assured that he does not know the meaning of life, 
that he has no hold on reality. " Eeal life, real 
[199] ' 



The Edge of the Woods 

things, real experience " — these are the slogans of 
the present age ; and they sound very well. 

" But what do they mean, just ? " 

The quiet person is not so clever as he is reason- 
able if he propounds this question. For the active 
person is instantly down upon him with the 
triumphant — 

^' There! What did I tell you? You don't 
even know what reality is." 

"Well, do you?" 

The quiet person is modest ; but he has read his 
philosophers, and he has understood that a very 
exacting hare is first to be caught if one would 
compound an ultimate pie of experience. He 
looks up, expectant. 

" Just what is reality ? " he inquires. 

The active person laughs loud and long, and 
claps his friend on the shoulder. Then he explains 
affectionately, if also a little condescendingly — 

" Work, business, anything that puts you in 
touch with the world as it is, and makes you feel 
alive. Human relations— love and hate. Vital 
experience. These are the things you should be 
after, not dreams and illusions. Come out from 
your meditations and live. Get down to business 
and understand the genuine values of things." 

This is all very sobering and perplexing. The 
active person has not, in the least, defined reality 
in his assertions concerning it ; he has not ex- 
[200] 



^-Wfi 



The Ultimate Hare 



plained what makes some things more real than 
others. No closer glimpse of the rabbit's tail has 
been afforded by his declarations than by all the 
ponderings of the philosophers. Yet his assurance 
has bred confusion in the mind of his friend. 

Ah, that rabbit ! Was there ever so perverse 
a beast ? Plato started it ages ago, and flattered 
himself that he ran it securely to ground. But 
every *' school " that came after him found the 
creature still afield ; and every successive genera- 
tion has given chase afresh. Some riders, mounted 
on strange nags, have gone so far — or come so 
far short — as to declare that there is no rabbit at 
all. But most people have continued to live in 
confident expectation of the final pie. Now the 
practical present-day person thinks he has found 
it — caught it and cooked it — and he invites all his 
friends to the banquet, his only stipulation being 
that they shall repudiate their own mistaken ex- 
periments with gun and cook-book. Is he right ? 
Is reality trapped at last ? Do we hold it in our 
hands ? 

" But what makes you think " — the quiet person 
is as perverse as the rabbit, popping up with his 
questions as persistently as the latter pops away — 
" what good reason can you give me for stating 
that one kind of experience is more real than 
another ? Nobody can expect to have every kind. 
For, while experience is the action of life upon 
[201] 



The Edge of the Woods 

the soul, it is still more the soul's reaction upon 
circumstance. That takes time — if it occurs at 
all. Does not the soul's own reaction determine 
reality for it ? " 

The active person does not care at all for this 
kind of language ; he laughs at it and waves it 
away. 

" Come down to my office some day and I'll 
show you," he concludes decisively. 

If the quiet person is really in earnest, really 
bent upon tracking the hare, he will accept this 
invitation. He will leave his study some morning 
and present himself at his friend's office door. 

Say that the friend is a banker and the quiet 
person a poet : the poet gains admission to the 
inner office and sits a while, watching the banker 
sign papers and sort huge bundles of notes. 

" Is this what you do all the time ? " he inquires 
at length. 

" Yes, for the most part," the banker replies, 
without looking up. 

" These are what you call real things ? " The 
poet fingers a thousand dollar note. 

" Well, rather ! " The banker laughs carelessly. 
'' The most real of all things, the very foundation 
of reality." 

" Yet it is just paper ; a spark would destroy it." 

" Ah, but, my dear fellow, you see it stands for 
solid gold." 

[202] 



The Ultimate Hare 



" ' Stands for '—oh, weU, then ! " The poet 

leans back in his chair and considers, making no 
further comment. 

" Just like everything else," he reflects. " Some- 
thing is always ' standing for ' something in the 
world at large. And as likely as not, the second 
something stands for something further. Here 
the paper stands for the gold, and the gold stands 
for an automobile, and the automobile stands for 
an idea of pleasure and convenience. A symbol 
of a symbol of a symbol of an idea — that's what 
my friend has in hand. 

" I grant you, ideas are the only real things," 
he says unexpectedly, as he rises to go, " but I'd 
rather touch them a little closer than at three or 
four removes." 

Next, being definitely out on this business of 
experimenting with reality, he enters the Exchange 
Building which is close at hand. The daily 
tumult is at its height. On the floor men are 
leaping and screaming, gesticulating frantically 
at one another. The poet cannot understand 
them, but of course he knows in a general way 
what they are about. Buying and selling crops 
of wheat, not yet matured, in a distant state. 
Wheat — that seems real enough ; but how remote, 
behind what a series : money and farmer and 
agent and miller and railroad and grocer and 
baker and purchaser ! Moreover, in the end, 
[ 203 ] 



The Edge of the Woods 

when it is eaten, it is eaten ; its period of real- 
ity is very limited. The person who eats it is 
the only factor in the complicated transaction 
that really matters. How many removes here? 
Eight at the least. The poet shrugs his shoul- 
ders. 

In the afternoon he dresses himself carefully 
and goes to a reception. " Social intercourse " 
is always being urged upon him as his privilege 
and duty if he hopes to know his fellows. It is a 
big reception ; there are many fellows there. But 
does he know them? JS'ot at all. To know 
people one has to hear them talk about something 
that interests them ; or, failing that, to make 
them respond to some interest of one's own. 
These herded, perspiring folk are lucky if they 
can make one another hear a few disconnected 
words uttered at a desperate pitch of voice. They 
have to choose sounds like missiles, and hurl them 
resolutely. The general effect is not unlike that 
of the tumult in the Exchange ; and the poet 
finds himself wondering if a system of signals 
might not to advantage be introduced in the 
social world. It would be very diverting to 
arrange such a code. Symbols again — oh, yes ! of 
course, nothing but symbols. Reality lurks be- 
hind, and is only touched when two friends turn 
away from the din and go and sit in a corner and 
snatch a few minutes' intercourse. They might 
[204] 



The Ultimate Hare 



have done this just as well at home — in fact, a 
great deal better. 

AYeary with his experiments, the poet at last 
decides that he has done his duty for one day. 
So he returns to his study. 

He finds it very good to be back. His books 
and his pictures and his open desk welcome him 
mutely ; and in his grate glows a remnant of a 
coal fire which, being ministered to, recovers its 
full cordial life. He draws the curtains and 
lights the lamp. His cat comes in and takes up 
her usual position in the best armchair. The 
poet sits down in the second-best and gives him- 
self over to honest meditation. What has it all 
amounted to — this day's investigation which he 
has put through ? Has he found any convincing 
proof of the more immediate presence of reality in 
the business and social worlds than anywhere else ? 
On the contrary, it has seemed to him that the 
hare matches its activity with the activity of cir- 
cumstance ; and, retreating behind symbol after 
symbol, hides itself very adroitly in the shows 
of things. He cannot remember ever having 
spent such an unsubstantial day in his life. 
Well, on the other hand, can he remember any 
substantial, genuine day to set up against this 
emptiness and point to conclusively : " Then I 
lived " ? If a man would win respectful atten- 
tion, he must be able to prove his position posi- 
[205] 



The Edge of the Woods 

tively as well as criticize that of his neighbor 
negatively. 

Genuine days ? Scores and hundreds of them ! 
The poet glances caressingly at his desk as much 
as to say, '^ We know all about that, don't we ? " 
But then he settles back in his chair, shuts his 
eyes and thinks hard to select some one supremely 
valid experience of reality. It takes him a long 
time ; he finds that he has a good deal of material. 

On the whole — ^yes (he stirs in his chair, but 
keeps his eyes closed, re-creating the scene), on 
the whole, he decides on a certain solitary ascent 
of West Mountain as typical of the sort of experi- 
ence he best understands. 

It was midsummer and the woods were still. 
Not a bird song, not a murmur from the shrunken 
brook in the leafy gorge, not a whisper among 
the trees. The whole world seemed — not holding 
its breath, that would have implied a restless ex- 
pectancy, but breathing inaudibly in a profound 
repose. The poet climbed steadily, with his eyes 
bent on the rough path beneath his feet. He 
hardly dared look about him at all, for the woods 
wore an august front of significance calculated to 
appall a lonely mortal. But he did not save him- 
self from them by his senses' denial of them. 
Kather, they pressed upon him the more because 
he neither saw them nor heard them ; there was 
something awful about the way in which they 
[ 206 ] 



The Ultimate Hare 



made use of his vacant organs to invade and con- 
quer him. They mounted with him, they mounted 
upon him, steadily gaining ascendency over his 
entire being, until at the last he gave himself up 
and recognized them as his master. There was a 
profoundly thrilling sense of ultimate entity in 
his final fusion with them. 

That was a real experience, surely ; no one 
could doubt it. But here the poet opens his eyes, 
smiling, and sits up. Of course the banker and 
broker would doubt it ; they would laugh at it 
and pronounce it quite as invalid as he had pro- 
nounced their experiences. "Well, then, what 
else ? At what other time had he felt himself 
utterly on the verge of reality ? 

One night, here in his study, when he had been 
reading late in a book of idealistic philosophy. 
Ah ! that was a striking experience ; he remem- 
bers it vividly. He had been wholly immersed 
in his book. It was one of those searching trea- 
tises which make their way as straight as they 
can go to the heart of things. From their pierc- 
ing prows matter and substance fall away like 
flying foam. Values and mysteries are reversed. 
Spirit seems the only thing that counts, and tan- 
gibility becomes the most inexplicable quality in 
the universe. It took the last stroke of the mid- 
night hour to rouse the poet from his deep en- 
gagement with this book. But then he came to 
[207] 



The Edge of the Woods 

himself with a start, sat up and looked about 
him, to catch the strangest impression of his en- 
vironment that he had ever had. His familiar, 
orderly study was in a dissolving, vanishing state 
of disintegration. His seeming solid tables and 
chairs, so self-possessed and calm usually, were a 
wild chaos of whirling atoms, nebulous, incoher- 
ent. They hardly seemed to be there at all, save as 
a sort of suggestion. There was in fact no fixed 
form anywhere he might turn his eyes. Life and 
motion were everywhere, but substance not at all. 
The impression lasted only an instant. He had 
not time to rub his eyes before shape fled back 
into position — a negligent guard on duty, sur- 
prised, a betrayed and betraying watchman. But 
that instant afforded him a rending revelation 
which he never forgot. Of unreality ? Yes, but 
much more of reality behind it, of God at work 
on chaos to-day precisely as urgently as before 
the advent of Adam and Eve, of the act of crea- 
tion as one of eternal immediateness. 

If the banker and broker refused to accept the 
mountain experience as valid, they would still 
more promptly deny the significance of this mid- 
night episode. They would turn on the poet. 
" An hour ago you were complaining because our 
world was unsubstantial ; now you are congratu- 
lating yourself on the unsubstantiality of your 
own. A fig for your consistency ! " 
[208] 



The Ultimate Hare 



The poet's reply would be ready : " In the one 
case, reality seemed to me to be retreating farther 
and farther behind the shows of things ; in the 
other, it came forth and rent them asunder before 
its mighty face." But he would do better to 
keep silence and let the matter drop. 

For, after all, the great thing is not so much to 
convert other people to one's own way of thinking 
— or even to convince them of its validity — as to 
prove it to one's own satisfaction and then to 
establish oneself securely in it. Moreover, it is of 
course true, as the poet began by declaring, that 
nobody can expect to have every kind of experi- 
ence ; and who shall say which is the right kind, 
or whether any one kind is more right than 
another ? Only Omniscience understands what 
reality is. If the poet desires the banker to be 
sparing in his criticisms, he must return the toler- 
ance. 

Perhaps the poet's other remark is true also : 
that the soul's own reaction on life determines 
reality for it. In that case, every experience 
would be as authentic as every other ; and instead 
of there being no hare at all, the whole universe 
would be nothing but hare — the reason why we 
cannot find it being simply that we are mounted 
on its back. 

In sober truth, what other conclusion should 
we arrive at but precisely this ? Every experi- 
[209] 



The Edge of the Woods 

ence is partial, but it is also genuine ; so long 
as we fully and faithfully follow our separate 
destinies, we can none of us escape reality. Every 
poet knows as much about life as every banker or 
broker ; every farmer as much as every sailor ; 
every school-teacher, dressmaker, housekeeper as 
much as every society leader or stenographer. 

Let us trust ourselves, and let one another alone. 
Yery likely we shall never make any sort of an 
ultimate pie ; for our hare is immortal, invincibly 
alive and alert in all its cosmic body. But, though 
we could hardly do worse than succeed in catching 
it, we can assuredly not do better than give it 
ehase — forever and forever. 



[210] 



XXIY 
THE NEXT GENERATION 

AT least, one hopes it Avill be the next. 
Those of us who most longingly anticipate 
the approaching turn of the wheel scan 
the unconscious faces of the babies in the streets 
and think, " You may see it, you little fellow, 
with the wide, mystical eyes, already prepared for 
the vision. Ah, how we envy, congratulate you ! 
Grow up worthily." But the wheel is a huge one, 
and it takes a long time for it to come full circle. 
Perhaps the children of our wistful admiration 
are only the fathers or grandfathers of the men 
and women who are to realize our dream. 

We are preparing it for them now, its elements 
are in our hands ; and that is the reason why we 
know that it is bound to come. Out of our recent 
skepticism, out of the materialism that has bur- 
dened and hampered us for so long, we are at 
last setting ourselves to shape an old, old vision, 
the brightest and best and most beautiful thing 
about which mankind has ever concerned itself, an 
immortal vision, neglected only to be the more 
eagerly resumed : the enduring, growing vision of 
the City of God. In other words, having been 
rationalistic and scientific and worldly wise, we 

[211] 



The Edge of the Woods 

are now about to become religious once more. 
We certainly are, there is no doubt about it, the 
dawn is in the sky. 

It is curious that such an important, vitally 
important, thing as religion should ever suffer 
eclipse. One wonders if it does. One would 
like to think that an obviously materialistic world 
was still religious at heart, holding to God by 
some other name (of course He has twenty thou- 
sand names), or serving Him unconsciously. And 
perhaps, fundamentally, this is true. The essential 
relation between God and man can never be lost 
without the destruction of the universe. Creation 
is religion. But, just as the full meaning of 
friendship implies reciprocity and is defeated by 
one-sidedness, so the term religion goes crippled 
unless it betokens a conscious response between 
Creator and creature. Individuals — many of them 
— have been religious during the nineteenth cen- 
tury and the eighteenth ; but the world at large 
has not been religious for several hundred years. 
That is a long time. No wonder those of us who 
care can hardly wait for the wide-eyed babies to 
grow up, and beat our breasts with sorrow to 
think that, after all, when they have done so, 
we shall be under the sod. 

Why have we all had to do this — swing so very 
far away from heaven, concern ourselves so des- 
perately with the things of the world ? Was the 
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The Next Generation 

reaction a punishment for some of our faults of 
impatience and violence ? Or was it merely the 
departure which every return demands as a neces- 
sary antecedent ? We are very stupid about that 
which remains an established part of our daily 
lives. No matter how precious it is, we grow 
dulled to its significance if we have it always with 
us. It was for this reason that God created the 
world in the first place. He had to send it out of, 
away from, Himself in order that it might realize 
Him and at once set up a mighty striving to get 
back again. Perhaps for this reason also He 
invented the devil and gave him occasional power 
over us. We could not know and love the good 
unless we likewise knew and hated evil. Certain 
it is that we best understand and most tenderly 
cherish those treasures from which we have been 
separated and to which we return. And when we 

return to our religion ! Ah ! little children 

in the streets, you would never sulk nor cry if you 
had any least idea of the glory of your destiny. 
A people's return to its religion is a tremendous 
thing. 

I said that we are preparing the way. We 
are ; and sometimes it seems as if we too might 
be called a religious generation. We are deeply 
concerned about righteousness ; we are all on fire 
to help one another and to reform the evils of our 
civilization. There was never a time when good 
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The Edge of the Woods 

works bulked larger in the desire and approba- 
tion of the world. Is not helpfulness a kind of 
religion ? Surely, love is, and self-sacrifice, and 
service. These beautiful things are making our 
old world a very warm and brotherly habitation 
at present ; we are freely giving out the best that 
we have in us. And yet not quite the best, after 
all. Service is the fruit of religion, and is won- 
derfully good ; but the seed at the heart of the 
fruit is that for which the tree and the apple and 
the universe were made. The fruit belongs to 
the world, and welcome ; but the seed belongs to 
God, and must be planted again and again that 
fresh life may spring up and worship Him. The 
circular plan on which we are built compels us to 
seem to work backward now and then ; and we 
are at present engaged in arriving at the seed 
through the fruit. When we have found it and 
planted it, our souls will once more grow up 
towards heaven. 

So practical and active are we, so governed by 
the tradition of proof, so eager to be of use to our 
fellows, that the simple, primitive act of worship 
seems to us sometimes unnecessary, almost a self- 
ish indulgence for which we ought to have no 
leisure. " Let us work for our brothers all day 
long, and pray if we have time." But once in a 
while, when we stop to think, we realize that this 
attitude is somewhat presumptuous. Who is 
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The Next Generation 

saving the world ? Am I ? Do I really consider 
myself qualified to save it all alone, or even as a 
member of a committee ? How about the great 
Spirit who knows the end from the beginning 
and shapes the process inevitably ? Is it not well 
to consult Him closely, to work under Him ? 
And what is salvation? Not food and clothes, 
not houses and work and prosperity, not all these 
good things half so much as the simple contact of 
the soul with God. For the soul that finds God 
finds itself and knows instinctively what to do 
with its groping life. We were made for wor- 
ship. " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself " 
is only the natural corollary to " Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and Avith all thy mind. This is the first 
and great commandment." 

Thy neighbor as thyself : that means that we 
are all one in the matter. We understand this ; 
the mystical truth of our world-unity is never 
absent from our consciousness, for we are grounded 
in it. But we interpret all things according to 
the temper of our age ; and, the present age being 
objective and active, we view our oneness object- 
ively. Since we are one, we make haste to dis- 
tribute ourselves to others, to devote ourselves. 
But why, since we are one, should not each of us 
sometimes see to it that his small drop of the 
common stream is headed straight for the ocean, 
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The Edge of the Woods 

that his prism fully reflects the sun ? A swift 
and bright response is that which, above all else, 
God desires of His universe, that which, being 
complete, would leave no room for unhappiness 
or failure. Every man helps or hinders his neigh- 
bor by the mere attitude of his soul. 

It is for this reason that one hopes that the 
next generation will fill its churches more com- 
pactly than we fill ours. Of course it is true that 
a church is no more the abiding place of God than 
a house or a meadow or a thoroughfare. Heaven 
is everywhere ; worship can spring up and find 
its goal from every point of earth. But churches 
have, by common consent, been built and set apart 
for the particular function of worship ; they stand 
to us for the things of the spirit ; they are recog- 
nized Jacob's ladders. A nation that wanted to 
manifest its loyalty to the cause of religion would 
naturally want to show itself in the temple. 
Moreover, there is nothing like a great church 
full of people for constraining heaven. Individ- 
ual souls have their own powers of adoration and 
persuasion ; they can venture far. But it takes a 
multitude, each helping each, to let itself go, 
boldly, utterly, on the immensity of the ocean 
which is the common origin and destiny. The 
God of the closet is a present God, infinitely 
tender and patient ; but He is partial, responding 
only to the special need of the petitioner. The 
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The Next Generation 

God of the cathedral is glorious, as many-sided, as 
rich in response as the congregation soliciting 
Him ; and each separate prayer is answered more 
fully because of the neighboring prayer which 
overlaps it. The tragedy of our present semi- 
religion lies in the fact that not even those of us 
who most longingly desire God can know Him 
fully, because of the vast, unknown regions of 
Him which only our neighbors can open up to us. 
Not until all the world is religious can any per- 
son or group of persons be so with completeness. 

We are fully convinced of the value of co- 
operation in every other department of our 
human life ; but in our religion we are apt to 
think that each man must shift for himself. As 
a matter of fact, it vfere easier for one man alone 
to work out the construction of the solar system 
and the problem of evolution than to arrive at a 
knowledge of God. We must help, we must 
learn from, one another ; we must gather together 
and watch and wait, laying all our hearts open at 
once. Then we shall have some chance of under- 
standing Kfe and of making a noble highway for 
the passing of the Spirit. Let there be no gaps 
between heart and heart for His patient feet to 
span. 

In the eagerness of our expectation, it must 
nevertheless, in all fairness, be admitted that there 
are some people who do not see any dawn in the 
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The Edge of the Woods 

sky just at present, who do not think that the 
world is becoming religious. There are even some 
sober thinkers who say that civilization has done 
with religion and is about to leave it forever be- 
hind. But what in the world can they possibly 
mean ? Civilization can no more dispense with 
religion than the fruit can dispense with the seed. 
Nay, the parallel is closer than that. As we 
suggested some paragraphs back, the very act of 
creation is religious in its nature. It is the eternal 
question to which our reply comes as the com- 
pletion of the only statement that matters. God 
always does His part towards us, whether or not 
we see our way clear to do our part towards Him ; 
and, though our silence is intermittent. His ques- 
tion sounds forever. Therefore, in a fundamental 
and seemingly paradoxical sense, religion can only 
become extinct through its complete fulfillment, 
as the climax of a period of religious fervor so 
great that it carries the world-river bodily into 
the sea. When that happens, the universe will 
be no more. 

But how shall we prove ourselves to the doubt- 
ers who say that the dawn is not yet ? How 
shall we justify our instinctive turning towards the 
East ? The mere instinct may be enough for 
the garden, stirring drowsily in the dew ; the 
rocks and trees and the mist-hung mountains 
demand a more solid assurance. Here it is 
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The Next Generation 

then : By their fruits ye shall know them. By 
those very fruits which we have just found to be 
not quite enough for the full life of the spirit. 
For there is no doubting their nature nor the 
nature of the seed which they must contain. 
Beautiful grapes of compassion and love, figs of 
brotherhood, apples of comfort — these do not 
bring forth anything less than the perfect love of 
God. Do men plant grape-vines from thorn trees 
or fig trees from thistles ? 

If not the next generation, then surely the next, 
or the next after that. The shadows are thick in 
the valley yet, and the mists hang low ; but be- 
hind the mountain the sky is throbbing with a 
promise. Before very long, the world will be 
kneeling together again and with one heart prais- 
ing God. 

How are the rest of us going to stand it not to 
be there ? 



[219] 



XXY 
THE ONE THING NEEDFUL 

THE perversity of our human ways is 
beyond comprehension. We certainly 
often seem to act as if we liked to be 
troubled, liked to harass our spirits with problems 
and difficulties. For we need almost never do so ; 
nay, our peaceful immunity might be complete, 
if we chose to have it so. There is one sure and 
simple, immediate way out of all questions that 
ever arise ; there is one secure answer that might 
prevent the questions before their birth. Only 
one standard presents itself for the testing and 
governing of every life, and that is ; the Will of 
God. 

Strange that we do not embrace this truth and 
abide in it ! The philosophers must be right when 
they say that consciousness is under an obscure 
necessity of realizing itself through contradiction. 
We have deliberately invented artificial standards 
and ends of our own, and have set them up over 
against the one sufficient End, thereby working 
dire confusion and pain for ourselves. 

Vanity ! vanity ! No one can ever fulfill an 
artificial end. The true End — patient, long-suffer- 
ing, absolutely inflexible — turns and overturns, 
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The One Thing Needful 

turns and overturns, until, out of a thousand mis- 
chances, it at last sees its way clear to a consumma- 
tion which was inevitable from the beginning. 
We cannot avoid it, but we can delay it — pitifully 
for ourselves. 

The chief trouble seems to be that we have 
deluded ourselves with the notion that the Will of 
God is hostile to our happiness. " Thy Will be 
done," is hardly ever spoken with the throbbing 
note of joyful expectation which properly belongs 
to it ; but is breathed low in resignation, with a 
long-drawn sigh. God must have need of all His 
patience when He hears us pray. 

As if His Will could ever be to work anything 
but the fullest development and therefore the 
fullest blessedness of His creation ! Why did He 
make us at all ? To fulfill some beautiful cosmic 
purpose, the grandeur and holiness of which begin 
to thrill us with wonder and love in these latter 
days. Each little part was perfectly planned to 
complete the whole ; and if each atom were 
obedient, it might know universal beatitude. 
Joy ? Why, what limited, individual bliss can 
compare with the glory of gladness with which a 
whole creation moves on its harmonious way to its 
consummation ? Not a human soul of us but 
understands that particular personal happiness 
hurts more than it soothes. When great joy comes 
our way, our finiteness oppresses us ; we fret 
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The Edge of the Woods 

against the barriers of our so circumscribed 
capacity, and all too often greet our dreams' ful- 
fillment with tears instead of songs. But a uni- 
versal attainment lifts and expands the spirit until 
it forgets its limitations and naturally and easily 
shares the very counsels of God. If we looked 
for our daily reward to one another, to our wider 
selves (for we are one another), and, above all, 
to God, who is our Self of selves, we should 
know unfailing satisfaction. 

l^or is the universal happiness all there is to 
the matter — though that is enough. Each indi- 
vidual finds his own immediate, temporal gratifi- 
cation only in the Will of God. He may think 
that this cannot be so ; he may strive feverishly 
to attain some end that he has devised for him- 
self ; his efforts will only result in restless misery. 
Whereas, if he listens and watches, obeys, he will 
from minute to minute take the sure path to his 
own in the world ; and only his own can ever re- 
ceive him or mean anything to him. 

Yet it is not always a simple matter — this read- 
ing of the Will of God. With the best intentions 
in the world, the most sincere people are often 
perplexed to understand what they should do 
next. Perhaps we have blunted our perceptions 
by long disobedience ; or perhaps heaven thinks 
that a certain amount of perplexity is good for us. 
At any rate, we are all at times put to it to take 
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The One Thing Needful 

our bearings ; we have to plead and agonize for a 
beacon light. Well, when God withholds Him- 
self, there is nothing to do but wait. But there 
are certain indications in our own hearts which 
may convict us of sin or righteousness. Great 
restlessness generally means that something is 
wrong, that we are pulling against God, resisting 
His touch. '' In His Will is our peace." Never 
spoke poet more truly and profoundly than Dante 
in those quiet words. " Be still and know that I 
am God." There again is an absolutely eternal 
and comprehensive admonition. For souls in per- 
plexity the churches wait with their open doors 
and their holy silence. One has but to enter and 
kneel and wait, giving himself over, letting him- 
self go, resigning his own conscious and uncon- 
scious will, utterly abandoning it ; and by and by 
he will see again the dear " quiet face of God " 
looking down upon him, and he will creep close 
and lay hold on the hem of the garment and be 
safe once more. 

" O God, I resign every purpose, wish, every 
lurking desire, every hope, utterly unto Thee. I 
have no care but to do Thy Will. My heart and 
my life lie empty before Thee. Take them and fill 
them and use them according to Thy great pur- 
pose. Amen." 

That is a prayer which heaven cannot fail to 
answer. 

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The Edge of the Woods 

It has been truly said somewhere that a man 
never really possesses anything until he has aban- 
doned it to heaven, honestly letting it go, and 
heaven has then surprised him by giving it back 
to him. Only with a few treasures among the 
many which we clutch and relinquish will heaven 
ever reward us ; but they are the only things worth 
having, they are the inalienable possessions of our 
souls. 

The only things worth having. Yes ; again it 
is strange that we do not realize this. A good for 
which one must scheme and strive, over the pre- 
cariousness of which one must hold his breath, is 
not solidly good at all ; it is a transient vexation. 
The real goods of life are as quietly sure as the 
dawn ; there is no escaping them. 

Therefore it follows that the one thing needful 
for us to know in this world is simply the Will of 
God. Therein lies our duty, our content, our 
ecstasy. Therein lies our only chance of making 
life worth while ; therein lies the significance and 
salvation of the universe. The Kingdom will 
come as soon as the Will is done. 



Printed in the United States cf America 



[224] 



